
Class 

Book, Grn ^^ 



COPWyGHT DEPOSIT. 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 



BECAUSE 
I AM A GERMAN 



BY 

HERMANN FERNAU 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

T. W. ROLLESTON 



AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 






COPTHIGHT, 1916, 
BY 

E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 




/^ 



MAY ! 2 1316 

PBINTED IN THE U. 8. A. 

©CI.A428971 

7u> I , 



CONTENTS 

FAOB 

Introduction . . . . . 7 

CHAFTEB 

1 23 

II ■ . .33 

III 53 

IV. . 93 

V 155 



INTRODUCTION 

A WRITEB who publicly takes part against 
his own country when it is engaged in a 
fierce struggle against hostile Powers does 
so at a terrible risk, a risk of more than 
life. The prosperity, nay, the very endur- 
ance, of any organised community depends 
on the loyalty of its members to the com- 
mon ideals and the common good of the so- 
ciety as a whole. The more gravely these 
ideals and interests seem to be imperilled, the 
deeper and more dangerous becomes the re- 
sponsibility of those who in any way seem to 
make common cause with the foe. It is not 
only natural and inevitable, it is also just and 
right, that they should be held sternly to ac- 
count, and that the sincerity and purity of 
their motives should be probed to the utter- 

7 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

most. Nor will even the purest of intentions 
serve to protect them against the stigma of 
dishonour if they are shown to be moved by 
no earnest and reasoned conviction, but 
merely by that perversity, levity, or exag- 
gerated individualism which may lead some 
minds that shine harmlessly in the everyday 
tournament of intellectual forces to throw 
themselves into fatal opposition to some pro- 
found national impulse which mere intellect 
could never have created, and cannot even 
comprehend. 

Yet no one can deny that crises may come, 
and have come again and again in history 
from the time of Micaiah the son of Imla to 
that of Edmund Burke, when to prophesy 
smooth things to a warring people is the 
worst of betrayals, and to rebuke its mad- 
ness and passion the truest loyalty. Then a 
man to whom a vision of the truth has been 
given must take his life in his hand and 
speak his mind, confident that he will be jus- 
tified by time and reason, and, above all, by 



INTRODUCTION 

his own conscience. Germany has produced 
such men. In this little book one of them is 
made known to the English-speaking world. 
They have not written against Germany. It 
is precisely because they are loyal to Ger- 
many and love the better part of their coun- 
try's complex being that they have dared to 
affront the enormous and unscrupulous pow- 
er represented by the despotic authority and 
the regimented intellect of that country in 
the present day. They have written for Ger- 
mans, and do not seek the praises of those 
who are in arms against Germany. In the 
whole of this book there is not one unworthy 
line of adulation such as might serve to win 
favour for it in the camps of the Allies. This 
has not saved the author's character or his 
right of free speech in Germany. His book 
had only been published three weeks when it 
was confiscated and all further sales pro- 
hibited. Even in Switzerland it has been 
thought necessary to safeguard the neutrality 
of that country by forbidding it to be placed 

9 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

publicly on sale. Yet though no one in Ger- 
many may read this book, anyone may de- 
nounce it and slander its author. One section 
of the German Press declares him to be iden- 
tical with the ''German scoundrel" who 
wrote "J 'Accuse."^ Another makes him 
out to be a Polish Jew, now living in Paris in 
the pay of the French Government. He is 
neither Pole nor Jew, but a Prussian subject 
of German stock, born in Breslau, where he 
lived up to the age of twenty-one. He was 
afterwards — like many others of his country- 
men — domiciled in Paris, where he wrote his 
first books, but his German nationality was 
sufficiently clear to oblige him to quit that 
city on the outbreak of the war, and he is now 
living in Switzerland. From this refuge he 
writes, not in the service of any of the Gov- 
ernments which are now contending around 
him, but for the sake of an idea — an idea 

*The publishers of "J 'Accuse," Messrs. Payot et Cie, 
Lausanne, have done this absurd imputation the honour of 
formally denying it. 

10 



INTRODUCTION 

which, as he is well aware, is not served with 
whole-hearted devotion in any modern State. 
That idea of liberty, justice, the humane and 
rational development of political, moral, 
social, and intellectual life in many free cen- 
tres, call them nations, or federated commu- 
nities, or what one will, is more openly and 
dangerously threatened by Germany at the 
present moment than it has ever before been 
in the history of the world. The friends of 
this idea are necessarily the enemies of Ger- 
many so long as her organised force is 
wielded under the influence of a poisonous 
delusion. We are fighting to protect our- 
selves, and to win peace and breathing-space 
for the gradual realisation in practice of the 
ideas which we cherish. They are ideas on 
which Herr Fernau has already laid stress 
in the work on the democracy of France 
which he published before the outbreak of the 
war. We do not pretend to have achieved 
our ideals already. Nor do we make any Tar- 
tuffian pretences of doing battle for the true, 

11 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

welfare of the German people. Yet, in sober 
truth, to eradicate the disease called Prus- 
sianism may, unless we are compelled to 
make the surgery more terrible and destruc- 
tive than it need be, set free a deeply buried, 
blind, at present almost inarticulate Ger- 
many, which, when it opens its eyes and feels 
its strength, will recognise that its worst 
enemies were not those who now face it along 
a thousand miles of steel and flame. 

The symptoms of the existence of this hid- 
den and now helpless Germany are not easily 
made manifest to the English or to any of 
the Allied peoples in their present temper. 
That is as it should be. We are at war; we 
have been plunged into a struggle of the ut- 
most desperation, and one of which the issue 
is still uncertain. The masses on both sides 
cannot see beyond the enemy's trenches, and 
it is better for the present that they should 
not. But the thinker and the observer have 
also their part to play; they have to judge 
the present situation on the basis of long 
12 



INTRODUCTION 

experience gathered under more normal con- 
ditions of life. To those who have known 
Germany, and the manner in which the spirit 
of the nation has expressed itself in litera- 
ture for many years back, the events of the 
War have brought a shock of astonishment 
and disgust which has found memorable ex- 
pression in Remain RoUand's famous letter 
to Gerhart Hauptmann. For just as in the 
Middle Ages, when the Church, in its vain 
and disastrous conflict with science and free 
thought, tried to force the intellect of man- 
kind to move in prescribed channels to an 
appointed end, so the Prussian system, which 
is simply Vaticanism in the secular sphere, 
has striven with all the force at its command 
to make the German intellect subservient to 
the ends of the State, as those ends were 
conceived by the Prussian soldier, the Prus- 
sian bureaucrat, the Prussian reigning dy- 
nasty. And, again, just as the great tumultu- 
ous tide of mediaeval literature was always in 
revolt against the limits imposed on it, al- 

13 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ways seeking and finding new channels, al- 
ways sapping tlie dams and barriers raised 
by either Church or State, so in modem Ger- 
many, ever since the Prussian domination 
began in 1815, literature — that is, creative 
literature, not the literature of the regi- 
mented Professors in their enslaved Univer- 
sities — ^has been in revolt against it, and has 
represented, more or less, the free conscience 
and the free intellect of the country. Few 
English readers know much about this litera- 
ture, or have any idea of the extent to which 
the modern German Reich and all its ways 
and works have been scorned and denounced 
in it. Sometimes the hostility has been di- 
rect and open, sometimes, as in the case of 
Hauptmann, it has taken subtler forms, and 
has painted with terrible realism the cancer- 
ous vices that underlie the mechanical organi- 
sation which presents so imposing an aspect 
to the outside view. As an example of the 
lengths to which this criticism has gone, let 
me quote a passage from a brilliant novelist 

14 



INTRODUCTION 

and essayist, Kurt Martens, who, in casting 
a regretful glance back to the days when 
Germany was a collection of small States, 
writes : — 

"It is true that in politics and economics there 
was then little to swagger about, but swaggering 
was not then in any case a German trait. Capital- 
ism and militarism were not then even in the hob- 
bledehoy period ; they were but feeding up for it as 
apple-cheeked urchins. The German citizen went 
soberly and considerately about his business, talked 
harmless politics with his neighbours, and sang in 
the evening his beautiful and dreamy old songs. 
The ringing trichord made up by the voices of the 
drill-sergeant, the petty official, and the commercial 
traveller had not then become, as it has since grad- 
ually done, the fanfare of the new German nation. 
We had then an aristocracy with aristocratic prin- 
ciples and forms of life, and a corps of officers 
mainly recruited from this aristocracy ; we had also 
a patrician class in trade and commerce, and patri- 
cians of culture who understood the temperate 
enjoyment of life. In Germany culture was then 
indigenous ; Germany had style. Now, Germany is 

15 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

an arsenal, a stock exchange, a madhouse, a mon- 
ster hotel. "^ 

Could any critic of Germany from the 
Allies' side to-day have delivered a shrewder 
thrust at modem German imperialism than 
this German writer did six years ago ? Might 
one not have predicted that a Power which 
could be truly described in these terms would 
be bound either to lower the ethical standards 
of civilisation, or to perish in some great 
catastrophe 1 

And Martens did not stand alone. His 
attitude was fairly representative of his 
whole class, the poets, play-writers, and nov- 
elists of modern Germany. But where were 
they, and in what kind of tones did they 
speak, when the German Empire actually 
brought forth the very fruits which alone 
could grow from such an organism as they 
had painted? This is the saddest and most 
hopeless feature of the whole wretched story, 

"'Literatur in Deutschland, " by Kurt Martens, 1910. 
16 



INTRODUCTION 

They made, all the distinguished names 
among them, common cause with their own 
worst enemy, the enemy of that better and 
truer Germany whose interests there were 
none to understand and to protect except 
themselves. They betrayed the Germany of 
their ideal for the Germany of the Prussian 
war-lord. They showed that the poison of 
Prussianism had entered into the very soul 
of the nation — for they are its soul. Their 
ordeal was a hard one, let it be granted; 
but how is the spirit to be tried unless the 
ordeal be hard? The country was suddenly 
ringed round with foes — it was true that they 
were foes who had been driven to arms, as 
they were plainly intended to be (with the 
exception of England), by the Austro-Ger- 
man ultimatum to Serbia ; yet the position of 
a patriotic German who did not wish to see 
his country led into a desperate adventure 
by a military autocracy was undeniably a 
difficult one. Still, they might at least have 
remained significantly silent. But they were 

17 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

not silent — ^they joined in the mad chonis of 
greed and battle-fury ; and when Hauptmann 
actually condoned, in plain terms, the flagrant 
perfidy and brutality of the invasion of Bel- 
gium he branded not only himself but his 
whole class with an inexpiable stain. Ger- 
many had often in history been betrayed by 
her own sons, but the betrayers were soldiers, 
or kings, or statesmen, and what they yielded 
was German soil. Never before had she 
suffered in interests so sacred as those which 
Hauptmann and his fellows, who alone had 
the power to defend or to sacrifice them, 
flung into the mire before the feet of the 
German Emperor. 

This, as I have said, is the most shocking 
feature of the whole transaction. It seems 
at first sight to leave no hope of the emer- 
gence of a nobler Germany from the present 
conflict. And yet matters are not altogether 
so bad as they might seem. The shame has 
been much greater and blacker than one who 
had studied the currents of thought in modern 

18 



INTRODUCTION 

Germany could have expected, but one must 
not forget how the author of ''J'Accuse," 
the author of the present masterly and vig- 
orous little book, and writers like Hermann 
Hesse, Annette Kolb, and Wilhelm Herzog, 
have in various ways striven to act in the 
spirit of the noble words prefixed by Rolland 
to his recent volume of collected studies on 
the war.^ How much they really stand for 
in Germany we cannot yet discern. At any 
rate, they have done what in them lies to 
redeem their country's honour, and if they 
are now proscribed and calumniated, they are 
suffering, as Fernau points out in a passage 
of penetrating truth, what was suffered in 
their time by the very spirits whom modern 
Germany most professes to revere. German 
soldiers now go to battle singing ^'Deutsch- 

*"A great nation assailed by war has not only its fron- 
tiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It 
must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and 
follies which the plague lets loose. To each his part : to the 
armies the protection of the soil of their native land; to 
the thinkers the defence of its thought. ' ' — ' ' Above the Bat- 
tle," by Eomain Eolland, p. 15. 

19 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

land liber AUes." The author of that song 
was dismissed from his professorship and for 
six years hunted from one German State to 
another because he had published a volume 
of songs which were not altogether to the 
taste of the Prussian authorities of his day. 
Time has brought its revenges, and has many 
more to bring. Meantime, let us take note 
of the existence of such writings as that 
which is here presented to English readers. 
It is worth attention not only for the spirit 
in which it is written, but as a study of the 
circumstances under which the World- War 
broke out. For a brief and convincing state- 
ment of the Allies' case it would be hard to 
better the short series of ''whys" in Chapter 
IV. The author writes throughout in the 
confident and masterful manner of one who 
has taken the measure of his opponents. He 
strikes hard and he strikes home. His book, 
as we have seen, is prohibited in Germany, 
and his friends there are of necessity dumb, 
but what he says aloud many must silently 
20 



INTRODUCTION 

think, and even in Germany thouglit cannot 
be wholly under police supervision. When 
the War is ended a new war will begin, waged, 
perhaps, with other weapons, perhaps partly 
with the same : it will be a war for the making 
of a new Germany. The issue deserves to be 
closely watched by all civilised nations, for 
on that issue turns the question whether the 
immense forces embodied in the German na- 
tion are to be won for reason and humanity, 
or to remain as agents of destruction and 
demoralisation in the hands that are wield- 
ing them to-day against all that civilisation 
holds most sacred and most dear. 

T. W. ROLLESTON. 



21 



BECAUSE I AM A 
GERMAN 



The publication of the work ''J'Accuse'* 
created an enormous sensation. The fact 
that in this book an authentic German should 
have unhesitatingly laid the blame for the 
outbreak of the World-War at the door of the 
Government of his Fatherland, the mysteri- 
ous anonymity of the writer, the bold yet 
logical exposition of his unsparing indict- 
ment, combined to establish his book forth- 
with in the forefront of War literature. 
Wherever men were thinking and discussing, 
this book, in spite of the tremendous military 
events then in progress, became the topic of 
the hour. To this ' 'wherever ' * we must, how- 
ever, make an exception of Germany and 
23 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

Austria-Hungary, in whicli countries the 
work was prohibited immediately on its 
appearance. 

That the Government of my country should 
have thought fit simply to prohibit "J 'Ac- 
cuse" is distressing to me, not because I 
regret that by this act the German public 
should have been deprived of the enjoyment 
of a valuable piece of literature, but, in the 
first place, because this prohibition seems to 
me to imply an offence against those sacred 
treasures of Culture for the protection of 
which Germany had drawn the sword, and, 
in the second place, because a Government, by 
forbidding a book, unfortunately creates to 
some extent the impression that it has been 
actuated by fear. 

If a person possesses incontestable proofs 
of the justice and sacredness of his cause 
(and we may presume that this was the case 
with the German Government), can there be 
any books which he is under the necessity of 
prohibiting? Are the German people, when 

24 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

they are discussing the origins of and re- 
sponsibilities for the World- War, to be al- 
lowed only to make use of a definite set of 
ideas manufactured for them in the Berlin 
workshop of Culture? Did not the German 
Chancellor, in one of his speeches, point out 
with pride that it was only the French who 
were subject to a petty, truth-fearing censor- 
ship, whereas the activity of the German 
Censor was limited to the purely military 
questions connected with the defence of the 
Fatherland! And is not this as it should be? 
Is the German military censorship, as the 
case of the book '* J'Accuse" would appear to 
indicate, to step outside its role, and consti- 
tute itself a general inquisition over all the 
offspring of men's minds, thus exercising a 
tutelage over the whole German nation? 

That would be regrettable from every point 
of view. Every true German patriot loves his 
country, not only because it is the most val- 
iant in war of all the countries in the world, 
but also because it is the native land of crit- 
25 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ical methods, of scientific logic, and of spirit- 
ual freedom. If, in the land of Kant and 
Fichte, a Government now declares that it 
must draw the sword in defence of these 
treasures of Culture, and yet at the same 
time enforces silence upon any critics who 
are not of one mind with itself, this proceed- 
ing ought to cause us Germans the utmost 
shame and anxiety: shame, because it is a 
flagrant contradiction between word and 
deed, which little becomes the Fatherland of 
spiritual freedom ; anxiety, because the Gov- 
ernment of our country, which now for seven- 
teen months has waged successful war against 
the armies and fleets of all Europe, thereby 
creates the impression that it is nervous of a 
book. Yet what would any victory of arms 
avail us, if we were forced in the end to lay 
down those arms before the spirit that speaks 
through books? 

The few copies of the book which have 
found their way into Germany, in spite of the 
26 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

prohibition, have called forth loud cries of 
''Shame!" and flaming protests. True, 
'' J'Accuse" has won approval in many fam- 
ilies and private conclaves in Germany, even 
in the most exalted spheres ; but this approval 
must not be voiced in public. The only feel- 
ings and opinions which may be voiced in 
public in Germany at present are those which 
echo the feelings and opinions of the Govern- 
ment. Of all that is being thought in Ger- 
many to-day the greater part will never be 
known, because it will never be permissible 
to print it. The so-called peace-within-the- 
precincts (Burgfriede) is an institution under 
which only staunch patriots can utter their 
thoughts with the tranquil assurance that 
they will meet with no contradiction. Indi- 
vidual opinions no longer exist, but only 
opinions that have found official sanction. 
Journalists and newspapers standing to at- 
tention ! Field-grey sentiments and field-grey 
science ! Iron words and iron money ! The 
whole nation one mass of bronze, in which 

27 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

no golden streak of individual character is 
allowed to glimmer! A scoundrel he who 
should now speak as a citizen of the world! 
An abandoned wretch he who now should 
hint a doubt of the supreme virtue and verac- 
ity of the Government once so bitterly ma- 
ligned ! An offspring of Hell he who should 
not look to Potsdam as the source of Truth ! 
In virtue of this same peace-within-the-pre- 
cincts, that which was once our greatest pride 
— for instance, the freedom of speech and 
criticism constitutionally guaranteed to 
every German — ^may now become a fearful 
crime, while, on the other hand, that which 
in normal times was looked upon as a sign 
of an inferior mind — for instance, contempt 
for foreign nations, what Bismarck de- 
nounced as the grovelling of the *' reptiles," 
and the like — is now esteemed an evidence of 
the highest virtue. 

These facts enable us to understand why 
"J 'Accuse" is for the time being a still-born 
infant as far as Germany is concerned, and 

28 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

why sentence of banishment and outlawry- 
was forthwith declared upon the author, who, 
a German subject, had displayed the unheard- 
of audacity to present the situation in a 
different light from that in which it was pre- 
sented by the Government of his country. 
So it happened that, one day, when in spite 
of every effort the book could no longer be 
hushed up, the German reader was deluged 
with a flood of articles and pamphlets, all 
with one voice pouring violent abuse upon a 
work which it was impossible for him to 
procure at any bookshop. The distinguished 
authors of these attacks (who, of course, 
knew what they were talking about) assured 
him that '* J'Accuse" was a shameful produc- 
tion, a scurrilous pamphlet, a murderous 
attack on their nation, and so on, and so on. 
To be sure, the honest fellow never doubted 
for a moment that it was only in France 
that the Censor was afraid of the truth, and 
that he himself, now as ever, was living in a 
land of freedom, and that it was the necessity 

29 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

of defending this freedom whicli had brought 
about the War; yet, this being so, he was 
forced to take note that we Germans (unless 
we happen to be living abroad) do not enjoy 
the freedom to reflect upon and discuss other 
explanations of the War than those dictated 
from Berlin. 

Because I do not believe that love of one's 
country and subjection of one's reasoning 
faculties are the same thing; because I am 
not prepared that our Government should 
restrict our right to a free investigation of 
the truth and perhaps even finally command 
us to raise our hands in horror at the de- 
pravity of a German whose only crime is that 
he is of a different opinion from his (cer- 
tainly not infallible) Government; because, 
moreover, I believe that it cannot be the pur- 
pose of this War to present us with a field- 
grey Germany, where frenzied abuse and 
calumniation of anyone who expresses a dis- 
sentient opinion shall be a political weapon, 
where a grovelling servility shall be deemed 

30 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the highest civic virtue, and intellectual bond- 
age a substitute for democratic sentiment — 
for all these reasons, I deem it necessary to 
speak a word of reassurance and explanation. 
While I give you my solemn assurance, 
Herr Censor, that I am a sincere patriot, that 
I was born and educated in Prussia, and that 
I have been generally reputed a good Chris- 
tian and a law-abiding German citizen by the 
authorities of my country, I would beg your 
kind permission to examine the book 
''J'Accuse" with an open mind, to discuss 
the answers to it which have been published, 
and to venture to express my own views 
concerning it. And all this, not for the sake 
of making myself a party to the dispute 
(Heaven preserve you and me from the 
Teutomaniac wrath of German scientists and 
scholars, as from all other afflictions!), but 
only for the sake of clearing up, in the name 
of the supreme treasures of Culture (for 
which Germany is fighting), the questions 
actually set forth in '' J'Accuse," and of ap- 
31 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

pealing for a genuine discussion of them, all 
the more earnestly because it is of the great- 
est concern to me, as a German, that the 
views expounded in a book which has been 
circulated throughout the world should be 
logically and judicially refuted. 



32 



n 

What is the substance and what is the in- 
tention of the book, "J 'Accuse"? 

It is an indictment against the German 
Government, and it sets out to prove that 
' ' Germany, in conjunction with Austria-Hun- 
gary, is guilty of having provoked the 
European War. ' ' 

In the first chapter, ''Germany, Awake!" 
the author tells us that the German nation 
has been the dupe of a gigantic lie, and he 
undertakes to prove that this is so. 

In the second chapter he gives us a ''His- 
tory of the Events Leading Up to the Crime. ' ' 
He quotes and analyses passages from the 
works of General Bernhardi, which go to 
show that the typical German representative 
of the Imperialistic view of war ardently de- 
sired the War, because he hoped that it would 

33 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

achieve great results towards the establish- 
ment of Germany as a World-Power. 
"J 'Accuse" believes that the Pan-Slav move- 
ment, which has often been named as the 
cause of the War, was scarcely as eager for 
War as the Pan-German movement. These 
'*Pan" movements are to be found in every 
country; they are harmless so long as they 
do not proceed to actions ; but our Pan-Ger- 
manists did proceed to the decisive action. 
The influential leader and battering-ram of 
the Pan-Germanist movement is, in the opin- 
ion of the author, the German Crown Prince ; 
he does not name him directly in this con- 
nection, but he describes him in such a way 
as to leave no room for doubt. The present 
War is, in his opinion, a ''war of conquest 
sprung from Imperialistic ideas and serving 
Imperialistic ends." Germany wants the 
famous "place in the sun." ''The place in 
the sun is the world-power which belongs to 
us as the chosen people of God." What is 
the meaning of "place in the sun"? The 

34 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

author of ''J'Accuse" maintains that Ger- 
many already possessed it before the War. 
In proof of this he quotes statistics (many 
of them again derived from the works of 
General Bernhardi) which demonstrate con- 
vincingly the magnificent development of 
Germany in every direction. Does Germany 
require more land, more colonies? The 
writer tells us that Germany's true colonies 
are in Paris, London, Manchester, New York, 
Canada, South America, and Australia — in 
those regions ''where we do not own a foot of 
land." That the annual increase of popula- 
tion, amounting to about 800,000, does not 
call for any expansion of territory he de- 
duces from the fact that the number of Ger- 
man emigrants has declined from 134,200 per 
annum in the years 1881-1899 to 18,500 in the 
year 1912, so that, at the present day, the 
annual immigration into Germany is in excess 
of the emigration from Germany, whilst 
trade, manufactures, shipping, and national 
wealth continue to increase. Also, Germany 

35 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

and the Triple Alliance had frequently won 
very considerable advantages by diplomatic 
methods. If, notwithstanding, the catchword 
"place in the sun" or the theory of the isola- 
tion of Germany, and so forth, were able to 
make such an impression on the German 
people that finally they were echoed by one 
and all, without any very clear idea of what 
was implied, it was because the Pan-Ger- 
manists had systematically set to work to 
secure popularity in advance for the impend- 
ing War. "J' Accuse" devotes twenty- two 
pages to a survey of the efforts and proposals 
made by England during the last few years 
with a view to arriving at a political under- 
standing and a naval agreement with Ger- 
many. All in vain! Germany persistently 
refused. She did not want equal rights, but 
supremacy. "If Germany really wanted 
nothing more than was repeatedly declared in 
all the speeches of the Kaiser, the Crown 
Prince, and the Chancellor, namely, security 
from attack, free play for her energies, un- 
36 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

hampered development of her Culture, how 
could she have better secured for herself 
these blessings than by accepting the pro- 
posals made by England?" Germany, then, 
is not fighting for her freedom, as her leaders 
maintain, since the freedom for which she 
professes to be fighting was already hers long 
before the struggle began. ^' J'Accuse" now 
discusses the following questions : Did France 
want to attack us ? Did Russia want to attack 
us I And, with the best intention, he can find 
no proofs of any design for attacking Ger- 
many on the part of these countries. He de- 
scribes the Triple Entente as a defensive alli- 
ance ^ ; he discusses the underground work- 

^ Throughout this study of the events leading up to the 
war, the author of "J 'Accuse" — apart from the Crown 
Prince and General von Bernhardi, who must be accepted 
as speaking with authority — bases his conclusions exclu- 
sively upon documents which are beyond criticism. More- 
over, the voluminous protocols of the Hague Conferences 
and the mass of literature connected with them confirm the 
justice of his assertion that it was Germany and Austria 
who, by their opposition, frustrated all the efforts of the 
Triple Entente to bring about a European court of arbi- 
tration and a limitation of armaments. One of the most 
prominent leaders of German pacifism. Dr. A. H. Fried, as- 

37 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ings of the German military party, with their 
picked troops — the Junkers ; he refers to the 

sures us (Blatter fur ZiviscTienstaatliche Organisation, No- 
vember-December, 1915) that there was, in fact, a close 
connection between the conduct of Germany at the Hague 
Conferences and the formation and strengthening of the 
Triple Entente. Dr. Fried writes: — 

"There was no thought of an attack on Germany, but 
only of the necessity for defence against Germany. . . . 
Germany's complaints against Delcasse and Lansdowne are 
unjustified. She has herself brought about the situation 
from which she is suffering. At The Hague in 1899 she 
placed in the hands of her enemies the moral weapon of 
mistrust. By so doing she neglected to seize a great oppor- 
tunity and to win for herself the reputation of a Power 
desirous of securing peace by modern methods. Germany 
showed an untimely persistence in her old paths. How 
greatly the attitude of Germany in the year 1899 was at 
fault may be gathered from the recently published reminis- 
cences of Andrew D, White. It is clear from White 's 
* Eeminiscences ' that Count Miinster (who obtained the title 
of Prince for his services at the Hague Conference) aroused, 
by his attitude as German delegate at The Hague, a feeling 
of exasperation and mistrust towards Germany in all the 
other States. Germany is still suffering from this mistrust, 
and Delcasse would not have been possible without Miinster. ' ' 

[Andrew Dickson White, a distinguished American author, 
born 1832, was U. S. Ambassador to Germany, 1895-1902, 
and a member of the Hague Commission, 1899. Graf (after- 
wards Fiirst) Miinster was of Hanoverian family. He was 
born in London, 1820. He has held the offices of German 
Ambassador in London (1873) and Paris (1885), as weU 
as that of German delegate at The Hague. — Ed.] 

38 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

revolution which (according to the statements 
of the French Yellow Book) has taken place in 
the views of the Emperor William II. during 
the last few years ; and he comes to the con- 
clusion that the truth is to be sought else- 
where than in the official German statements 
of the causes and aims of the War. The 
true purpose of the War is, in the opinion of 
the author, the conquest of freedom — ''that 
which is mine by right" — namely, abroad, the 
politico-commercial supremacy in Europe 
aimed at by the German World-Power poli- 
ticians, and, at home, the political enslave- 
ment of the German people; that is to say, 
such a crushing of its democratic ambitions 
as the Prussian Junkers achieved by the 
Prussian victories of 1815, 1848, and 1870-1. 
In the third chapter the author of 
''J'Accuse" discusses the ''crime" itself; 
that is to say, the diplomatic mechanism 
which unchained the war. Any person who 
sets out to examine the question of the re- 
sponsibility for this War should read this 
39 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

chapter twice over. For it is, in the first 
place, the most important part of the hook — 
the actual accusation and argument — and, in 
the second place, it is a very well-reasoned 
and original survey of the events of those 
critical eleven days, taking into consideration 
all the circumstances and all the possibili- 
ties, so far as the available official documents 
of the countries involved make this possible. 
The limits of this book do not permit of an 
analysis of his survey ; but in any case these 
178 pages must be uncomfortable reading for 
any German citizen who makes no distinction 
between love of his country and trust in the 
German Government. Not so much because 
the statements of "J 'Accuse" are in flat con- 
tradiction to the official German statements of 
the origin of the War, but, most of all, be- 
cause it is difficult to ignore the judicial 
acumen with which "J 'Accuse" goes to work 
and the wealth of material which he brings 
forward. I found it easy to compose a refuta- 
tion of the first 113 pages of the book, for, 
40 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

after all, it is easy to present ''antecedent 
events" in a light favourable to any country 
and any party. With the exercise of a little 
skill, it is a matter of no great difficulty to 
assemble everything which serves one's pur- 
pose and to draw a veil over the rest. But 
here, where we are confronted with the mo- 
mentous question : Who was it who proceeded 
from idle threats to actual deeds 1 here, where 
we have to deal with nothing else than offi- 
cial documents, which are accessible, verifia- 
ble, and convincing for all and sundry ; here, 
where the writer, setting aside all patriotic 
prejudices and sentiments, comes forward 
only as a logician and a jurist, we must either 
produce a judicial refutation in the shape of 
valid documentary counter-evidence, or we 
must admit that he is right. The methods 
employed by the author in this chapter, so 
far as I can judge, are such as to afford no 
possibility of deliberate deception and mis- 
representation. If the first two chapters con- 
vey the impression that the writer is more a 

41 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

partisan than a jurist, in reading the third 
chapter we feel that he is not accusing the 
German Government because he wants to 
accuse it, hut because he is confronted with 
documents which compel him to this course. 
Later on we shall have occasion to repeat a 
few of the questions which are propounded, 
examined, and answered in ^'J'Accuse." It 
appears to me that anyone who undertakes to 
reply to the book ought first of all to reply to 
these questions. Yes, I would go so far as to 
say that anyone who is of opinion that the 
question of the responsibility for this War 
ought to be made the subject of a thorough 
and systematic examination (since only by 
this means can we prevent the occurrence of 
similar catastrophes in the future) ought to 
take the same course as that taken by the 
author of "J 'Accuse"; because, unless these 
questions are answered with reference to the 
diplomatic documents belonging to the crit- 
ical eleven days, any examination of this ques- 
tion of guilt will soon degenerate into 
42 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

frenzied panegyrics of the respective Father- 
lands of those engaged in the investigation. 
The fourth and fifth chapters of the book 
(''The Consequences of the Act," ''The Fu- 
ture") need not detain us here. In these the 
writer reveals himself as a resolute pacifist, 
inveighs against the system of armed peace, 
appeals for a peaceful alliance of free na- 
tions, and intimates that a free Germany 
must of necessity be a republican Germany. 
Just as the first and second chapters are 
only introductions to the third chapter of 
the book, in the same way the last eighty 

pages are only conclusions to it. 

***** 

Like all books which are concerned with 
topical issues, "J 'Accuse" has its faults. In- 
deed, these faults are so numerous (and in 
the state of "peace-within-the-precincts" 
lend themselves to such convenient exploita- 
tion) that by enumerating them we might 
easily mislead the reader in regard to the 
real contents and value of the book. From 
43 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the very first lines we feel that the writer 
belongs to those republicans of the old school 
who in their secret souls join with Kant in 
placing the blame for wars on absolute king- 
ship. Consequently, he is not always speak- 
ing in the character of a stern logician, but 
frequently in the character of an apostle of 
that republican ideal so sternly prohibited in 
Germany. A strong personal antagonism to 
Junkerdom and militarism is apparent on 
every page, as well as that love for the Fath- 
erland which throughout German history has 
always been held deserving of punishment — 
imprisonment in the case of Jahn, the father 
of German athletics ^ ; disgrace and calumny 
in the case of Ernst Moritz Arndt, the most 



"Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) was one of the most notable 
of German patriots during the Napoleonic period. He 
founded in 1811 the Turnvereine, or athletic societies, which 
have been a feature in German life ever since. During the 
period of political reaction after 1815 every popular and 
voluntary organisation came under the ban of the Govern- 
ment, and Jahn was arrested in 1819 and not released for 
six years. — Ed. 

44 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

national of our German poets.^ This love for 
the Fatherland, with its assumption that the 
arch-enemy of the German people is not out- 
side, but inside its frontiers, occasionally 
obscures the clear vision of the writer, and 
gives rise to a somewhat one-sided presenta- 
tion of the facts, such as is particularly and 
disagreeably noticeable in the second chapter 
of the book. After all, we are not concerned 
to present England, France, and Russia as 
innocent lambs, and Germany and Austria as 
greedy beasts of prey. In examining the 
origins of the war, the author ought to have 
borne in mind that there existed also in 
France, Russia, and England numerous indi- 

' Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860) was author of some 
of the most inspiring of the songs of freedom which were 
written during the struggle with Napoleon, His lines: — 

Der Gott der Eisen wachsen liess, 
Der wollte keine Kneehte, 

are printed to-day at the head of German war-postcarda. 
He was arrested in 1820, deprived of his Professorship of 
History at Bonn, and forbidden to write or lecture. The 
scandal in his ease was very conspicuous, for his country 
had no more loyal subject. — Ed. 

45 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

viduals, associations, newspapers, and books 
whose aim was to egg on their country to 
war. Moltke, Treitschke, Frobenius, and 
Bemhardi were, in fact, not the only individ- 
uals in Europe who extolled war as a heaven- 
sent blessing and a baptism of healing for the 
nations. 

In this connection, however, it ought to be 
emphasised that the advocates of war in the 
countries of the Triple Entente, especially in 
France, formed a dwindling minority without 
influence either on the Government or the peo- 
ple. This fact I have myself, as the result of 
long study, expressly emphasised in my book, 
"The French Democracy" (**Die Franzo- 
sische Demokratie"). In a long passage on 
' ^ The Peace-Guarantees of the Third Repub- 
lic" (''Die Friedensgarantien der dritten Re- 
publik") I have drawn attention to those pe- 
culiar features of the French democracy (in- 
fluential State finance with pre-eminently in- 
ternational interests, a stationary population, 
an increasing worldliness, a pacifist conception 

46 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

of society on the part of the leading French 
intellectuals, the effect of democratic ideas, 
and so forth) which have formed a combina- 
tion of elements distinctly opposed to war, 
and, in the course of decades, have brought 
about a perceptible weakening of the idea of 
revanche. In Germany, on the other hand, 
the chauvinistic pro-war agitation has been 
promoted and encouraged among the most in- 
fluential circles by the Junkers, militarists, 
and Pan-Germanists. In the Pan-German 
Union (Alldeutscher Verband), in the Navy 
League (Plottenverein), the Defence League 
(Wehrverein), and similar associations, Ger- 
many already possessed gigantic organisa- 
tions, extending over the whole Empire, which 
were preparing her, in accordance with a defi- 
nite programme, for the ''inevitable" war for 
world-supremacy. 

To return to ''J'Accuse." The observa- 
tions of the writer with regard to the military 
situation existing at the time that he was 
writing seem to me beside the question. Al- 
47 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

though his conclusion that the present War 
can under no circumstances end in Germany's 
victory is confirmed more and more every 
day by the course of military events, his 
prophecies have furnished a welcome pretext 
to the all-too-numerous intellectual busybodies 
who alone have the right of free speech, for 
calling into question the writer's love for his 
country, and for persuading the uninitiated 
reader that he has written in the interests of 
the enemies of Germany. 

This last suspicion, however, is proof of a 
lack of psychological acumen. An author who 
was in the pay of the enemies of Germany 
would have written with much less heat, that 
is to say, with less imprudence, and would 
have produced a book which, like all books 
written to order, would have been much more 
calm, more precise, and more tedious. It is, 
in fact, the passionate enthusiasm for his po- 
litical ideal displayed by the author which 
proves that the book was written in response 
48 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

to an inward compulsion, and that it was, in 
fact, a spontaneous expression of the au- 
thor's love for his country. ''J'Accuse" is 
written with so much heat ; it is so devoid of 
literary artifice and studied effect; the char- 
acter and soul of the writer are presented to 
the reader with so much reality and emotion 
and guilelessness — in fact, the book is so de- 
fective and one-sided from the standpoint of 
German scientific cautiousness that, in spite 
of the judicial questions with which it is con- 
cerned, from the first to the last line, it con- 
veys the impression of an outpouring of the 
heart. A writer who is not writing spontane- 
ously in the cause of an ideal will never make 
this impression, will never be able to carry 
away the reader with him. And, quite apart 
from this, nobody will pay a price for an 
anonymous writer. The first condition ordi- 
narily imposed on a writer whose pen it is 
desired to buy is that he shall contribute his 
name (and it must be a well-known name) 
49 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

to the support of the ideas which are to be 
dictated to him. * 

In any case, ''J'Accuse/' like all valuable 
and enduring books, is not an '* objective" 
book in the German sense of the word. And 
therefore anyone who studiously ignores the 
kernel of the book (the third chapter) and 
only reflects with a shake of the head on the 
zeal which the writer has brought to the work 
of assembling all the circumstances most dam- 
aging to the German Government, may easily 
get the impression that '* J'Accuse" is not a 
serious work, but a libelous production, that 
it is not inspired by any earnest motive, but 
that it is an accusation framed in a spirit of 
partisanship against the Governments of the 
Central Powers. 

*If, on the one hand, the anonymity of the writer seems 
to me a proof that he wrote his book with complete inde- 
pendence and with a sorrowful heart, on the other hand I 
cannot on principle approve that he should not have put his 
name to it. Yet, in view of the present stifling of every free 
expression of opinion, I can excuse the anonymity, for it 
offers the only possible way of supporting ideas and aspira- 
tions which are prohibited and punishable by law. 

50 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

The more steeped a man is in the ideas 
which are the rule in Germany at the present 
time, the more strongly, of course, will he get 
this impression. For we repeat once again : 
the patriotism revealed by the writer of this 
book is regarded in Germany to-day, as it was 
regarded a hundred years ago, as nothing less 
than high treason. 

For those of us, however, who, in the inter- 
ests of truth, feel ourselves unable to defer to 
the views of Berlin on the subject of high 
treason, there is no reason for judging 
"J 'Accuse" in a different fashion from other 
books. In the foregoing pages I have at- 
tempted to indicate the structure, the main 
ideas, the defects, and the prejudices of the 
book. And because, as an impartial German, 
I am of opinion that the book contains, in 
spite of its defects, the most important ele- 
ments towards the discussion of the question 
of responsibility for the War ; because, more- 
over, I believe that we Germans, in the inter- 
ests of our country and of the coming peace, 

51 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ought neither to shun this discussion nor to 
dilute the question of responsibility — for 
these and for other reasons it seems to me 
absurd to whisk the book under the table with 
facile and insulting words of abuse, as it has 
been sought to do in Germany up till now. 
To try to abuse out of existence a book which 
has justly created a sensation all over the 
world and has already been translated into 
most of the languages of civilisation is a 
childish and a wholly un-German proceeding. 
Unless we are to corroborate indirectly the 
statements of the writer, we must refute them 
in a fair and business-like manner. 

Let us now proceed to examine the most 
important answers to '* J'Accuse" which have 
been published up to the present. 



52 



ni 

Apakt from numberless newspaper articles, 
there are, in particular, three replies to 
*'J'Accuse" which have been published and 
assiduously propagated in Germany : — 

*^A Slanderer,"^ by Professor Th. Schie- 
mann; ^^ J 'Accuse from the Notes of a Field- 
grey Academician" 2; and *' Reflections of a 
Swiss Neutral on the book J 'Accuse."^ 

Like all those who during the last few 
decades have openly and defiantly supported 
the right and destiny of Germany to a world- 
supremacy and thereby excited amazement 
and anxiety in foreign countries. Professor 

^ ' ' Ein Verleumder, ' ' Georg Eeimer, Berlin. 

^^^J^ Accuse aus dem Aufzeichnungen eines Feldgrauen 
Akademikers, " Stilke, Berlin. 

^ ' ' Gedanken eines Schweizerischen Neutralen iiber das 
Buch: JMccwse," A. Luthy, Solothum. 

53 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

Schiemann,* the author of the first pamphlet, 
is a notability of present-day intellectual Ger- 
many. Together with Rohrbach, Reventlow, 
Chamberlain, Harden, Keim, Ostwald, Som- 
bart, and so forth, Privy Councillor Schie- 
mann commands a division of that Imperial- 
istic army whose Commander-in-Chief is 
named Bernhardi. He is thus the political 
antithesis of the author of ** J'Accuse." 

On the very first page of his pamphlet he 
assures us that the author of *' J'Accuse" is 
not a German patriot, but a deliberate slan- 
derer. Schiemann, the Professor of History, 
contents himself with giving a summary of 
the contents of the book in nine lines, and 
then asks excitedly: "Has there ever been 
heard a more shameless distortion of the 
truth from the mouth of a German, to the 
detriment of his country ? ' ' Perhaps it might 

*Dr. Theodor Schiemann (6. 1847), one of the most vio- 
lent of the disciples of Treitschke, has long been noted for 
his anti-English and anti-Russian views. He is Professor 
of History at Berlin. His most notable book on the war 
is "Die Letzten Etappen zum Weltkrieg: Deutsehland und 
die grosse Politik, anno 1914." — Ed. 

54 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

first be asked whether a German Professor of 
History ever before passed a more superficial 
judgment upon a book which was being dis- 
cussed all over the world. 

Professor Schiemann informs us that Ger- 
man Imperialism involves no idea of world- 
supremacy, and that it is only ''malicious 
misrepresentation" that has made it appear 
to do so. ' ' The courageous writings of Bern- 
hardi, with a clear prevision of what was 
preparing, have demonstrated the necessity 
of drawing the sword." 

Courageous writings! Herr Schiemann 's 
whole conception of the universe is contained 
in these two words. This honest, good-na- 
tured German Imperialism, which a closer 
inspection reveals as the most peaceable 
philosophy in the world ! If one were infected 
with the servile zeal of the German Profes- 
sors of History, one might almost weep over 
that ''malicious misrepresentation" which 
has been propagated over a wicked world. 

But still further conclusions are arrived at, 
55 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

if we attack the subject with German pro- 
fessorial earnestness: for instance, the re- 
markable fact that ''preventive" means, not 
'^ preventives^ at all, but properly ^'defens- 
ive.ss ''It is also a historically untenable 
assumption that a preventive war cannot be 
in the nature of a defensive war," very in- 
genuously remarks Herr Schiemann. What 
would he say if anyone were to steal his purse 
and at the same time maintain that he was 
obliged to steal it, because otherwise the Herr 
Privy Councillor would have stolen his, and 
that consequently his theft is, to be sure, a 
theft, but only a preventive theft, and even, in 
fact, a necessary measure of self-defence 
against Privy Councillors ? Herr Schiemann 
would doubtless pronounce the fellow to be 
out of his senses, since he himself is an honest 
man and has never had any intention of 
stealing purses. And Herr Schiemann might 
perhaps add that, by admitting such "lame 
excuses ' ' as these, we should be smoothing the 
way for crime. This is what Herr Schiemann 

56 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

might conceivably say in reference to his 
individual case. But if England, France, and 
Russia say the same to Germany — namely, 
that they never had any intention of stealing 
— then he stoutly maintains that these are 
only cunning lies, devised in order to put Ger- 
many off her guard and then to steal her 
purse. 

A grain of logic, please, Herr Professor! 
Either you must admit that the absurd excuse 
of the thief who steals your purse is legally 
sound, in which case Germany certainly has 
a right to wage a preventive war (but in that 
case every thief has the right to steal a purse 
upon the plea that he has acted in self-de- 
fence) ; or else you do not admit this excuse, 
and, in that case, the German preventive war 
was — as the author of "J 'Accuse" asserts — 
a crime. But if in the one case you say that 
the more loudly the thief endeavours to vin- 
dicate his action by lame excuses the more 
culpable he becomes, while in the other case 
you declare that Germany was justified in 
57 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

assuming that her enemies were planning to 
attack her and in forestalling them (and 
that, therefore, her preventive war was a 
measure of self-defence), this is logic for 
babes, and an insult to an adult human 
intelligence. 

In any case, Herr Schiemann, in the sen- 
tence quoted above, admits that Germany is 
waging a preventive war, thereby uninten- 
tionally corroborating the accusations of the 
' ' slanderer. ' ' 

The above will sufficiently indicate the 
character of the Herr Professor's pamphlet. 
But the anxiety which he displays to avoid 
the central issue of '' J'Accuse," and the loud 
loquacity with which he discourses on sub- 
jects entirely alien to the discussion, are so 
grossly evident in his pamphlet that I can- 
not refrain from analysing it a little further. 

The author of ''J'Accuse" has committed 

the crime of giving to his study of the events 

leading up to the War (to speak in the spirit 

of the time) a republican bridge-head. Pro- 

58 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

fessor Schiemann, on the other hand, erects 
a Pan-Germanist bridge-head. He tells us 
about the origin of the Hague Conference, 
and about other things which we are not 
interested to know, and finally, on page 23, 
he comes to the point, and asserts somewhat 
pompously that ''anyone who invalidates the 
verdicts of not guilty pronounced [in the 
book ''J'Accuse"] upon England, Russia, 
and France, by producing overwhelming 
counter-evidence, thereby cancels at the same 
time the verdicts pronounced by the ' German' 
against the Fatherland, and against Austria- 
Hungary. It will suffice, therefore, to exam- 
ine these verdicts of not guilty, which are 
refused acceptance by the whole unanimous 
German people, with the single exception of 
the so-called ' German. ' ' ' Now that the Herr 
Professor has, in this elegant and striking 
proposition, as it were, rolled up his shirt- 
sleeves, the reader awaits the pompously ad- 
vertised "overwhelming evidence." But 
what does Herr Schiemann do 1 He ransacks 

59 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

every nook and corner of the history of the 
last twenty years for expressions of hostility 
to Germany — books, newspapers, &c., emanat- 
ing from the countries of the Quadruple 
Entente; he discusses in detail a book — 
Flourens' '^La France Conquise" — though he 
admits that it was entirely without influence ; 
he speaks of the political influence of the 
French freemasons, of the exertions of Rus- 
sia to form closer relations with England, of 
the Balkan entanglements of recent years, of 
the treacherous policy of Italy, of the policy 
of encirclement of Edward VII. (which, of 
course, could not fail of success), of every- 
thing from any source far or near which suits 
his thesis, except the one thing about which 
he set out to and ought to speak. Nowhere 
is there any examination of the questions 
raised in ''J'Accuse." Not a syllable con- 
cerning the third chapter of the book, which 
none the less occupies 178 pages out of the 
total of 370. Nowhere do we find the prom- 
ised * ' overwhelming evidence. ' ' Schiemann 's 

60 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

production is, in fact, a 63-page history of 
the events leading up to the War presented 
from the German nationalist standpoint. 

But while the author of "J 'Accuse," in 
his history of the events leading up to the 
War, at any rate makes use of ofi&cial docu- 
ments and authorities, the Herr Professor 
rakes together, without discrimination, 
everything which falls to his hand which may 
serve in any way to lay bare the infamy of 
the enemies of Germany. What would he 
have said if '' J'Accuse" had taken the same 
course, and had based his accusations upon 
the senseless ravings dished up in the news- 
papers, reviews, and publications of the Pan- 
German League (Alldeutscher Verband), 
the Defence League (Wehrverein), the Navy 
League (Flottenverein), the Peasant League 
(Bauernbund), &c., &c.? Doubtless he would 
have pointed out indignantly that the 
Deutsche Tageszeitung, the Tdgliche Rund- 
schau, the Post, the Kreuzzeitung, the Rhein- 
isch-Westfdlische Zeitung, the Alldeutschen 
61 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

Blatter,^ and otliers, do not express the views 
of the German Government, that in Germany 
any man can write what he pleases, and that 
it would be madness to quote the personal 
opinions of crazy devotees of world-suprem- 
acy as proofs of a desire for war upon the 
part of the German Government. In this we 
should support him unreservedly, and we are 
therefore all the more astonished that, though 
he does not scruple to reproach others with 
being unscientific and libellous, he himself 
quotes without sense or discrimination from 
chauvinistic leaflets, private expressions of 

"The Deutsche Tagesseitung (Berlin) is the organ of the 
Prussian Junkers. Graf Eeventlow is a member of its staff. 
It is edited by Dr. Greorg Oertel. The Tdgliche Eundscfiaw 
(Berlin), edited by Heinrich Eippler, represents the Inde- 
pendent National section in politics. The Post (Berlin), 
edited by Dr. H. Pohl, is Independent Conservative. The 
Kreuzzeitung (properly entitled the Neue Preussische Zei- 
tung), published in Berlin, and edited by Dr. H. Wendland 
and Hauptmann G. Foertseh, is strongly Conservative and 
Evangelical. The Bheinisch-Westfalische Zeitung is pub- 
lished at Essen. It represents Independent National ideas 
and the armament factories. The Alldeutschen Blatter, a 
more recent production, is the organ of the Pan-Germanic 
movement. — Ed. 

62 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

opinion, and obscure scribblers belonging to 
the countries of the Quadruple Entente, and 
treats these as "overwhelming evidence" of 
the desire of these countries for war.^ 

What must be the mental condition of this 
German celebrity that he should dare to 

•As an example of the seriousness with which Schiemann 
sets out to write history, he quotes at great length the pam- 
phlet, "La Guerre qui vient, " by Francis Delaisi, and de- 
clares that it was at once bought up and cancelled by the 
French Government, but that, on the outbreak of the war, 
it was immediately reprinted. With regard to this pamphlet 
(which was published for, and addressed to, the very limited 
and special public who were readers of Gustavo Herve's 
Guerre Sociale, which was at that time still definitely anti- 
militarist) : firstly, it was not accessible to the general read- 
ing public; secondly, it never went beyond the first edition; 
thirdly, it was never objected to by the French Government; 
and, fourthly, it was not reprinted after the outbreak of the 
war. In all probability, the unsold balance of the first edi- 
tion is still reposing in the offices of the Guerre Sociale. 
But the anti-English tendency of the pamphlet was so se- 
ductive to Herr Schiemann that his imagination accords it 
the honour of State proceedings, and represents Monsieur 
Delaisi, who before the war was scarcely known outside 
Paris, as the one enlightened intelligence in France. That 
this same Delaisi, in his speeches and writings, pleaded ener- 
getically for an understanding with Germany is a fact which 
Herr Schiemann naturally ignores, since this second aspect 
of the man would not harmonise with his picture of a France 
frantic for revanche. 

63 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

serve us up such a hotch-potch of nursery- 
tales as an answer to, and a refutation of, a 
clearly reasoned work, which may have its 
faults, but which, after all, is not to be dis- 
posed of by the back-stairs gossip of Euro- 
pean diplomacy? Why did he entitle his 
pamphlet ''A Slanderer," when he not only 
does not examine the most important section 
of the alleged slander, but even admits, in 
his incoherent history of the events leading 
up to the War, that Germany is waging a 
preventive war, thereby indirectly corrobo- 
rating the statements of the author of 
*' J'Accuse"? It is a stain upon the reputa- 
tion of German scholarship that one of its 
representatives should be seen banging his 
fists on the table and pouring forth such 
ignorant twaddle, just as if we were simple- 
tons who had only to believe whatever Herr 
Schiemann chose to describe as "overwhelm- 
ing evidence." 

But we are not simpletons, and we there- 
fore maintain that, since the Herr Professor 
64 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

still owes us a proof of his assertions, since 
he has jumbled together in a worse than 
unscientific fashion an extremely futile and 
subjective history of the events leading up 
to the War (which, even if it were intrinsi- 
cally valuable from beginning to end, would 
still prove nothing against ''J'Accuse"), 
and, into the bargain, by means of his own 
peculiar professorial logic, argues that 
^' preventive^ ^ really means ^' defensive^* 
(thus indirectly corroborating the accusations 
of the "slanderer"), it would not be a mis- 
print if the title of his book were also ap- 
pended as its signature. 

***** 

The pamphlet by the field-grey academi- 
cian demands even less serious examination 
from the point of view of the refutation for 
which we are seeking. 

It is a regrettable fact, though no doubt a 
dispensation of Providence, that in our Ger- 
man academicians, for all their learning and 
their earnestness, there is always a touch of 

65 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the ridiculous. This one, for instance, in the 
very first line, is seized with horror that 
anyone should exist capable of writing such a 
book ("50 ein Buch"). In fact, the book dis- 
tresses him to such an extent that he feels 
drawn to it with "that mixture of horror and 
loathing which impels us to the spot upon 
some lonely road where an unexpiated mur- 
der has been committed." 

This romantic and gruesome phantasy is 
pervaded not only by the servility which leads 
so many German academicians to confuse 
loyalty to one's King with love of one's 
country, but also by a prepossession which 
makes discussion absolutely impossible. 

Let us, then, leave this gentleman the aca- 
demic joy of having contributed his log to 
the wood-pile on which ** J'Accuse" is burn- 
ing. We respect the superstition of old 
people, even when it evokes a smile. Let us 
respect the field-grey temper of this acad- 
emician, who, to be sure, is not yet old, but 
has already learnt to wriggle for the bait 
66 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

upon whicli at some future date will glitter, 
we trust, the highest honours of the Royal 
Prussian Academy of Learning. 

The ''Reflections of a Swiss Neutral on 
the Book * J 'Accuse' " are unfortunately, 
for the most part, only reflections on the un- 
patriotic depravity of the writer. This neu- 
tral, too, was inspired by an inward horror 
at the vileness of a man who should dare to 
bring an accusation against the Government 
of his country. From the fourth line, in 
which Herr Weber (the author of these ''Re- 
flections") speaks of the "arrogant tone and 
unreliable statements of the book," we guess 
that here again we need not expect to find any 
genuine discussion. And, in fact, Herr 
Weber contends on the third page that this 
" J'Accuse" fellow cannot possibly be a Ger- 
man patriot; he even discovers that "every 
line of his work breathes hatred of the Ger- 
many which had grown so strong and power- 
ful since 1870." 

67 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

What has impelled this neutral to give so 
much prominence to a question of the senti- 
ments of the author — a question which, in 
the first place, is alien to the discussion, and, 
in the second place, does not in the least 
concern a neutral — remains his own secret, 
regarding which we may form our own 
theories. 

And then the logic with which Herr Weber 
assails the book! To the statement of the 
author of '' J'Accuse" that Germany is wag- 
ing a war of aggression, he replies, for 
example, with a toast of the King of Italy 
(at Naples, on March 16th, 1914), in which 
William II. is celebrated as ''the strongest 
bulwark of the peace of Europe'*; and then 
with a telegram of Victor Emmanuel to the 
Emperor of Austria, in which the latter is 
assured that Italy will maintain an ' ' attitude 
of sincere friendship" towards Austria- 
Hungary. ' ' Would the King have used such 
words of a frivolous disturber of the peace of 
Europe?" demands our neutral with a sim- 
68 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

plicity which is almost disarming. He re- 
gards the documents discovered by the Ger- 
man Government in Brussels as '' historical 
documents of incontestable value for anyone 
who loves the truth," and he cites a report 
of the Belgian Minister at Berlin, dated May 
30th, 1908, which, in his opinion, ^* affords 
decisive evidence in regard to the origin of 
the War." 

What are we to make of it? Now the 
question of the responsibility for this War 
is decided by a royal toast dating four months 
before its outbreak, and now by the report 
of a diplomat dating six years before its out- 
break. But, in this case, I will not withhold 
my own contributions to the argument. I 
therefore refer Herr Weber to the note- 
worthy fact that, in the 'eighties, a certain 
Deroulede openly preached a war of revanche 
against Germany, and that, even as early as 
at the time of the Thirty Years ' War, France 
leagued herself with Sweden in the most ma- 
licious way, with a view to compassing the 
69 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

destruction of Germany. Space unfortu- 
nately does not permit me to bring forward 
still further proofs of the mendacity of the 
book "J 'Accuse.'* Nevertheless, it is suffi- 
ciently clear from the facts adduced by Herr 
Weber and supplemented by myself that the 
hypothesis of the author of **J'Accuse," 
namely, that Germany and Austria-Hungary 
in the period between July 23rd and August 
1st, 1914, intentionally provoked the War, 
cannot be anything else than an infamous 
lie. Anyone who fails to see that, as a result 
of these historical facts, no other course lay 
open to Germany on August 1st, 1914, than 
to declare war on Russia is simply a block- 
head. 

Just as Weber, a late Judge of the Con- 
federation, seems to be entirely ignorant of 
the fact that a crime cannot be excused on 
the plea that the culprit knew that another 
man intended to commit the same crime and 
wished to forestall him, he seems to be equally 
ignorant that a crime cannot be justified by 
70 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

insisting on the very dubious past of the 
victim of it. The manner in which he deals 
with the documents discovered in Brussels 
not only amounts to a justification of Ger- 
many's violation of the neutrality of Bel- 
gium, but also shows that what he is pre- 
senting us with is merely an uncritical repe- 
tition of the statements of the German 
Press. What would he say of a Belgian who, 
in the event of the violation of the neutrality 
of Switzerland by one of the Great Powers, 
should bring forward the documents which 
that Great Power would certainly discover in 
Berne as ''incontestable evidence," and 
should deduce from them that Switzerland 
was not really neutral, but that she had sold 
herself, and consequently only deserved her 
fate 1 As if there were not everywhere and at 
all times people who make it their business 
to cast aspersions on the victim of a crime 
with so much persistence and ingenuity as 
to convey the impression that a service has 
been done to humanity, and that the criminal 

71 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

is, in fact, a hero who has relieved the human 
race of an encumbrance. Such Jesuitical and 
juridical devices, with the help of which a 
counsel frequently succeeds in talking away 
the central issue of a debate in a court of 
justice, may deceive the vulgar multitude 
(especially if they are precluded from read- 
ing any other version of the story), but not 
the serious logician, and still less the honest 
neutral. We should have expected from a 
genuine neutral that he would have listened 
with some scepticism to the defence of the 
Imperialist advocate ; our Swiss, on the con- 
trary, demonstrates such loud and unques- 
tioning approval that one might almost 
imagine that he belonged to the claque of the 
Berlin Court Theatre. 

After Herr Weber has devoted eleven 
pages to narrating the history of the events 
leading up to the War after his own fashion 
(Imperial toasts and telegrams, Belgian 
documents, and a book by an English labour 
leader published in 1912), he makes a feeble 

72 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

attempt in the remaining nine pages to exam- 
ine the questions actually propounded in 
*' J'Accuse." But since any adequate exami- 
nation would be impossible in the space of 
nine pages, all that he actually does is to make 
a tour of the subject and then leave it. To 
anyone who still had any doubts on the sub- 
ject it must now have become clear that this 
Swiss is a secret votary of Imperialistic 
methods and of the divine right of kings. 
For instance, on page 14 he declares very 
modestly : ' ' It might well be suggested that 
Serbia could have been punished by other 
effective means . . . but I do not presume 
... to reproach Austria with lying and 
trickery when she solemnly declared before 
all Europe that she would not seize so much 
as a square foot of Serbian territory . . . " ; 
while on page 19 he as-serts very positively: 
"And the feeling of Kaiser Wilhelm that it 
was incompatible with the honour and dignity 
of Austria that a question concerning her 
relations with Serbia should be submitted to 

73 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the decision of a conference, was certainly 
justified. ' ' In other words : I, a republican, 
have much too sacred a respect for the diplo- 
macy of Austria to venture upon a criticism 
of her conduct; and, on the other hand, by 
reason of this same respect, I look upon it as 
quite natural that the * 'feeling" of a single 
individual should decide absolutely the ques- 
tion of peace and war in Europe. This ser- 
vile obeisance before the views and judg- 
ments of those in high place may do for a 
Prussian district councillor, but we could 
.willingly forgo it in the free citizen of a highly 
developed republic. If Tell and Winkelried 
and Bubenberg had treated the Austrian 
dynasty with the same respect on the several 
occasions in the Middle Ages when the latter 
set out to "punish" the ** machinations" of 
the Confederacy (history is constantly re- 
peating itself, as Nietzsche says), Switzer- 
land at the present day would be, not a free 
democracy, but a kind of Austrian Helvetia. 
Anyone who, like Herr Weber, turns the 

74 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

writing of liistory into a prostration before 
the great ones of the earth is reduced to 
regarding us as cattle to be slaughtered 
and enslaved for ''higher ends," and the 
Winkelrieds as the hooligans of the world's 

history. 

The strangest thing, however, about Herr 
Weber's pamphlet is the grandiloquent and 
patriotic conclusion, which gives the impres- 
sion that it might have been composed by 
the editor of the Deutsche Tageszeitung? 
"Such statements as these [those of the 
author of "J 'Accuse"] could only come from 
a degenerate son of his fatherland!" exclaims 
Herr Weber with pious indignation. 

I could scarcely believe my eyes. Can it be, 
then, that this moralist knows nothing of the 
sad history of intellectual freedom in Ger- 
many? Has it never been brought to the 
knowledge of this Swiss that nearly all those 
whom we revere as the greatest spiritual 
heroes and the most ardent patriots of Ger- 

'See note on p. 62. 

75 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

many have been slandered and persecuted 
during their lifetime as "degenerate sons of 
their fatherland"? Ernest Moritz Amdt,^ 
for example, who to-day is regarded, even by 
our blood-and-iron fanatics, as a pattern of 
true German patriotism, was for years de- 
nounced to the German public as a rebel and 
a slanderer. Gutzkow,^ an ornament of Ger- 
man literature, suffered imprisonment for his 
opinions. Jahn,^*^ the father of German ath- 
letics, one of the most courageous patriots 
concerned in the rising of 1813. was for years 
imprisoned as a demagogue and placed un- 
der humiliating police supervision. Fritz 
Reuter,^^ one of the greatest German poets 

®Arndt. See note on p. 45. 

'Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878) was the author of several 
brilliant romances and plays, including "Die Ritter vom 
Geist" and "Zopf und Schwert. " His liberal ideas in 
religion led to the complete banning of his writings for a 
time, and brought him a term of imprisonment (1835). — Ed. 

*" Jahn. See note on p. 44. 

"Fritz Eeuter (1810-1874) was author of some of the 
most humorous and racy stories of country life in German 
literature. He wrote ia the Plattdeutsch dialect. "Ut 
meine Stromtid ' ' is his best-known work. — Ed. 

76 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

of the last century, was sentenced to death 
for his labours on behalf of the German 
Students ' Association, then let off with thirty- 
years ' imprisonment, and finally restored to 
freedom after serving seven years of this sen- 
tence. And so with every other champion of 
the German ideal of freedom — Borne, Laube, 
Herwegh, Wienbarg, Freiligrath, Prutz, 
Pfau,^2 ^Q^ Very long and unspeakably sad 
is the list of German poets, thinkers, and 
patriots (I do not even include Heine among 
them) who have had to endure abuse and 
ignominy, imprisonment and exile, merely be- 
cause they felt and expressed democratic- 
republican sentiments. Is Herr Weber aware 
of the scandalous fact that the composer of 
our national hymn, ' ' Deutschland, Deutsch- 
land liber Alles" (Hoffmann von Fallers- 

"Ludwig Borne, Heinrich Laube, Ferdinand Freiligrath, 
Georg Herwegh, and the others mentioned belonged to the 
' ' Young German ' ' Liberal movement of 1815-1848, and had 
all to endure exile and the banning of their writings in 
Germany. — Ed. 

77 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

leben) ^^ endured for years the most cruel 
persecution from the German Government, 
who were not satisfied until this ' ' degenerate 
son of his fatherland" had taken refuge in 
Mecklenburg? And that little change has 
taken place in Germany since the time of 
Metternich ^^ and of the Socialist legislation 
is proved by the case of Hauptmann among 
many other incidents of the last century. 
Hauptmann, Germany's greatest living poet 

^'August Heinrich Hoffmann, born at Fallersleben, 1798, 
wrote the famous national song, " Deutsehland iiber AUes," 
in Heligoland, 1841. He was deprived of his Professorship 
of German at Breslau in 1841 for some of the sentiments 
expressed in a volume of Unpolitische Lieder, and had to 
endure much privation and annoyance for some years there- 
after. He died in 1874.— Ed. 

"Klemens Lothar Menzel, Fiirst von Metternich (1773- 
1859), presided at the Vienna Congress, 1815, and was For- 
eign Minister of Austria from that date to 1848, when he 
was driven out by the revolution. He was the soul of the 
reactionary and despotic influences which prevailed on the 
Continent after the fall of Napoleon I. The Viennese police 
once distinguished themselves under his regime by confiscat- 
ing a new edition of Copernicus because the title of the 
volume began with the words "De Eevolutionibus " — the 
movements of the heavenly bodies being the "revolutions" 
referred to. — Ed. 

78 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

— ^who at the present moment is already dec- 
orated with the Order of the Red Eagle, that 
is to say, who is far from possessing the 
intellectual courage of his forerunners — ^was 
brutally reproached by the German Crown 
Prince a year before the beginning of the 
War (on the occasion of the prohibition of 
his Breslau festival play) as a degenerate son 
of his fatherland.^^ We may confidently as- 
sert that the terror manifested by the Prusso- 
German Government at any kind of intellec- 
tual freedom has at all times been so puerile 
that a German cannot so much as dot the '4" 
of the word ''republic" without at once being 
howled down as a ''degenerate son of his 
fatherland. ' ' 

A degenerate son of his fatherland! If 

"Gerliart Hauptmann, the most distinguished figure iu 
contemporary German literature, a Silesian by birth (1862), 
was commissioned to write a commemorative drama or Fest- 
spiel to be performed at Breslau in 1913, the centenary of 
the Battle of Leipzig. The play on being produced was 
found to lay more stress on the popular uprising of 1813 
than on the part played by Prussian princes or generals, 
and the Crown Prince insisted on its withdrawal. — Ed. 

79 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

this alleged free Swiss had a little less respect 
for Prussian State discipline and a little more 
sense of the ridiculous, he would not have 
written as he has. Yes, he might certainly 
very well have spared us his "reflections." 
In his exceedingly un-Swiss eagerness to bow 
down before German official ideas, he pro- 
ceeds to launch a terrible anathema against 
the author of the detestable work (the word 
"degenerate" in particular he emphasises in 
capital letters). He has only succeeded in 
provoking a smile. And inasmuch as the 
"degeneration" to which Herr Weber refers 
has always been in Germany a sign of great- 
ness and originality, his anathema is almost 
in the nature of a high compliment to the 
author of "J 'Accuse." 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Among the many articles which have been 
published in Germany in answer to "J 'Ac- 
cuse," I cannot forbear to mention the very 
curious article, "A German Ephialtes," 
which was published in the German period- 
80 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ical Mdrz (September 18th, 1915), and which 
was from the pen of the Socialistic Vice- 
President of the Austrian Chamber of Depu- 
ties, Herr Pemerstorfer. This article is 
typical of the present much-discussed ''re- 
valuation of all values," not in the sense in 
which Nietzsche intended it, but in the sense 
in which Potsdam has effected it in the case 
of those who were yesterday her most out- 
spoken enemies. Moreover, Herr Pemer- 
storfer does me the honour of making a com- 
parison between my own book,^® published in 
May, 1914, and * ' J 'Accuse " ; he cites me as in 
some degree an instance of how far a free- 
dom-loving German may prosecute his criti- 
cism without incurring the danger of being 
put in the pillory as an unpatriotic ruffian. 

It is a satisfaction to me that, in spite of 
my severe criticism of the German Empire, I 
should still be accounted by Herr Pemer- 

^^"Die franzosiselie Demokratie, sozialpolitische Studien 
aus Frankreiehs Kulturwerkstatt " (Duncker and Humblot, 
Munich). 

81 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

storfer not only a German, but even an 
*' apostle of freedom." I was therefore all 
the more astonished at the patriotic emotion, 
bordering on hysteria, with which this Social- 
ist regards *'J'Accuse," an emotion rather 
befitting the president of some paltry pro- 
vincial war society. To be sure, he admits 
that the conduct of the Central Powers in 
this War lends itself to criticism on various 
heads (and especially in the matter of the 
violation of Belgium's neutrality), and that, 
for the purpose of making a critical analysis 
of ** J'Accuse," it would be necessary to in- 
vestigate the individual statements contained 
in it. Instead, however, of doing this, or of 
at least promising us an adequate investiga- 
tion of the book at a later date, Herr Perner- 
storfer is seized with an attack of Teuto- 
maniac wrath. He searches out the most 
obscene words in which to give vent to his 
indignation, and finally exclaims, in the bit- 
terness of his anger, that ''the simplest and 
most natural thing to do would be to dispose 

82 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

of the author of the book 'J 'Accuse' with a 
well-merited kick. ' ' 

As if the book could be ''disposed of" by 
this kind of horse-play ! Herr Pemerstorf er 
ought to know that abuse is not argument, 
and that, in fact, such abuse has often been a 
proof that the victim of it was in the right. 
Also Herr Pernerstorfer should consider a 
little the curious impression made by such 
patriotic extravagance coming from a Social- 
ist. For the Socialists, who during the last 
forty years have threatened all kinds of revo- 
lutionary intentions and have scoffed at and 
fought against the national idea as ^^bour- 
geois stupidity," are certainly playing a 
comic role if they are to-day to perform the 
function of chuckers-out on behalf of those 
whom they were accusing only yesterday of 
exploitation, chauvinism, and superficiality. 
I could show Herr Pernerstorfer articles in 
which (at a time when such things were still 
permitted) he made merry over those nar- 
row-minded people whose highest ideal was 

83 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

their fatherland. But when it came to the 
point, when the Internationalists at length 
had an opportunity of carrying out their pre- 
arranged programme, and of showing those 
horns and claws of which they had bragged 
all over Europe until everyone was sick of 
them, lo and behold! these revolutionary 
rams suddenly transformed themselves into 
harmless sheep, prepared to allow their last 
vestige of wool to be shorn for the purpose of 
keeping warm that class-domination which 
had once been so shamefully abused.^'^ To be 
sure, we bear no ill-will to Herr Pernerstorf er 
because he is one of the shorn, but it certainly 
strikes us as rather ridiculous that he should 
now have become more German — that is to 

"Bead, for example, the stirring appeal, containing the 
most scathing indictment of the Austrian Government, which 
was issued by the Social-Democratic section of the Austrian 
Imperial Council on the publication of the ultimatum to 
Serbia, and in the composition of which Herr Pernerstorfer, 
as one of the principal leaders of this section, doubtless had 
a hand. The attitude which he adopted towards the same 
Government a few weeks later, and, as we see, maintained 
with gusto, is in the most glaring contradiction with this 
appeal. 

84 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

say, more rowdily patriotic — than the Pan- 
Germans. And although Herr Pemer- 
storfer's abusiveness recalls that of a police 
functionary, in whose case curses and kicks 
are rather a part of his calling than an ex- 
pression of the heart, all the same, we do not 
believe that Borne was right when he declared 
savagely that the people of every nation were 
slaves, but that the German people were lack- 
eys. 

We would rather believe that Borne 's 
bitter scorn is not applicable to Herr Perner- 
storfer, and we confidently hope that he will 
rend asunder the terrible book in the charac- 
ter of a respectable representative of the 
' 'materialistic conception of history.' ' Should 
he fail to do this, there would certainly be no 
lack of people to point out that Herr Pemer- 
storfer's attitude furnished an illustration of 
Borne 's assertion, and this, in the interest of 
his good fame, I should sincerely regret.^^ 

** Since Herr Pernerstorf er entitles his article ' ' A German 
Ephialtes," I may venture to point out that there are two 

85 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

For the sake of completeness we must refer 
here to the pamphlet, ''The Origin of the 
World- War in the Light of the Publications 
of the Powers of the Triple Entente," by 
Dr. Karl Hel:fferich ^^ (Georg Stilke, Berlin). 
It is, to be sure, not a direct reply to "J 'Ac- 
cuse," but, since its author is the present 
German Secretary of the Treasury, we may 
regard it as a semi-official attempt at self- 

Ephialtes in Greek history — a rogue who betrayed to the 
Persians the footpath to the pass of Thermopylae, and a 
sturdy democrat who by his uncompromising attitude set a 
limit to the omnipotence of the Areopagus and helped on 
the work of the Athenian democracy. Both have been re- 
garded as traitors to their country — the first by every decent 
man in modern as well as in ancient times, the second only 
by the persons in power in his day, who took the precaution 
of having him assassinated. 

Things have not changed much since then. The Ephialtes 
of the second order are regarded now, as they were re- 
garded then, as traitors to their country. Only that at the 
present day (as is proved by the ease of Liebkneeht) they are 
murdered by their own comrades. More arrogant, more 
positive, more autocratic than ever, the modern Areopagus 
gazes insolently down upon the Fatherland, for over it 
Pernerstorfer and his like are mounting zealous guard. 

"Dr. Karl Theodor Helfferich (&. 1872) was a Professor 
of Political Economy, who became Director of the Deutsche 
Bank, and is now German Finance Minister. — Ed. 

86 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

vindication on the part of the Government. 

Unfortunately, this attempt is incomplete. 
Was this due to indolence, or the sense of a 
clear conscience, or want of time, or under- 
estimation of his readers* competence to 
form their own judgments'? In any case, 
Dr. Helfferich dates the origin of the "War 
from July 31st, and tells us on the second 
page of his work that it was Russia who defi- 
nitely kindled the conflagration, and that it 
wag ''her general mobilisation, ordered by 
the Czar in the early morning of July 31st, 
and his refusal to revoke this measure when 
requested to do so by Germany," which was 
the direct cause of the War. 

But Dr. Helfferich knows as well as we do 
that the crisis which led to the World- War 
did not make its first appearance on July 
31st, but on July 23rd. Before, therefore, we 
discuss the question of the Russian mobilisa- 
tion (which, in any case, was a result of ante- 
cedent events, and not a cause in itself) we 
must ask him to be so kind as to discuss the 

87 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

numerous other diplomatic incidents which 
preceded the outbreak of the War. 

For instance, I do not understand why Dr. 
Helfferich examines in such detail the tele- 
grams which were exchanged between the 
Czar and William II. on July 30th and July 
31st while he makes no reference whatever 
to the Czar's telegram of July 29th contain- 
ing the proposal that the Austro-Serbian dis- 
pute should be submitted to the Court of 
Arbitration at The Hague ? Was such a pro- 
posal emanating from such a source, consid- 
ered beneath notice? 

In regard to the proposal made by Grey 
(English Blue Book, No. 88; German White 
Book, p. 11) that Austria should content her- 
self with the occupation of Belgrade as a 
pledge for a satisfactory settlement of her 
demands. Dr. Heliferich remarks: ^'This 
proposal was transmitted by Germany to the 
Austro-Hungarian Government, with a 
recommendation; likewise by the French and 
English Ambassadors to the Russian Govern- 

88 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ment (French Yellow Book, No. 112)." We 
are delighted to have this information, be- 
cause ''J'Accuse" declares that no such 
recommendation was ever made by Germany. 
But, in order to enable us definitely to pro- 
claim the statements of "J 'Accuse" as false- 
hoods, Dr. Helfferich must name the docu- 
ment which (like No. 112 of the French Yel- 
low Book in the case of Russia) affords proof 
that Germany did recommend the proposal to 
Austria. In view of the lamentable fact that 
the whole world is striving to lay the blame 
for the World- War at the door of Germany, 
Dr. Helfferich should realise that the bare 
assertion that Germany recommended this 
proposal to Vienna is not sufficient. 

Dr. Heltferich declares further: ''The 
[above-mentioned] proposal [from Grey] 
had not yet been answered by Austria, and 
Russia also had not yet published her views 
in regard to it, when the general Russian mo- 
bilisation was carried out." But, your Ex- 
cellency, if a person is really eager to find 

89 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

some means of preserving the peace (and 
surely this was the case with Austria) he 
answers such proposals immediately. In this 
instance there was absolutely nothing for 
Eussia to reply. But that Austria, from 
July 29th to July 31st, should have found no 
time for an answer, although she knew that 
the whole of Europe was waiting in agonised 
suspense, hoping for a peaceful adjustment 
of the dispute — this is such an incredibly dan- 
gerous dilatoriness that she must surely have 
had some really weighty reason for it. If 
anyone should say : ' ' I have not yet paid up, 
and already the bailiff is in my house," there 
would be something a little comic in this 
''not yet." But when Dr. Helfferich merely 
writes : ''Austria had not yet answered and 
already Eussia was mobilising," there is an 
element of real tragedy in his "not yet," be- 
cause on this "not yet" the peace of the 
world hung suspended for three days. Why 
does Herr Helfferich mock his readers with 
these tragi-comic "not yets"? Is it possible 

90 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

that he does not realise that this ''not yet" 
is at once an absurdity and an admission of 

guilt? 

Space does not permit us to examine Dr. 
Helfferich's composition in further detail, but 
it will be clear from what has been said above 
that it is serious in intention, but not in exe- 
cution. For he promises us an examination 
of the subject "in the light of the publications 
of the Powers of the Triple Entente"; but he 
actually examines not one-fifth of those pub- 
lications. This arbitrary selection and rejec- 
tion is an insult to our much-extolled German 
thoroughness. Either we Germans are thor- 
ough, in which case we must refer to and 
discuss fully all the available documents; or 
else— as is apparently the case with Dr. Helf- 
ferich— we have not time for this, in which 
case we naturally convey the impression of 
shirking an unpleasant duty. In the interests 
of Germany's cause we therefore entreat Dr. 
Helfferich most urgently to take the time and 
pains necessary for the examination of all 

91 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the documents. A drama is meaningless if 
only its final act is presented. The Russian 
mobilisation was only the final act in the dip- 
lomatic drama which culminated in the "War. 
Since Herr Helfferich simply strikes out the 
first act, that is to say, makes the World- War 
originate from an end which has no begin- 
ning, he produces on the thoughtful reader 
the quite erroneous impression that he is 
Helfferich {i.e., resourceful) not only in name, 
but also in deed. 



92 



IV 

We liave seen that the book "J 'Accuse," 
no matter what fault we may find with it, is 
none the less a seriously written, logically 
constructed, substantial piece of work. The 
sales of the German edition already amount 
to 30,000 copies, and it has been published 
in French, English, American, Dutch, and 
Swedish translations, and reviewed in the 
Press of the whole civilised world.^ 

While, however, expressions of apprecia- 
tion and genuine criticisms of this work have 
emanated from all the neutral countries 
(especially Holland, the United States, 
Sweden, and Norway), the answers to it 
which have emanated from Germany or the 
friends of Germany have been, considered as 

* Moreover, Eussian, Italian, and Spanish translations are 
advertised to appear shortly. 

93 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

impartial investigations of the truth, abso- 
lutely valueless. Anyone who reads these 
answers with a patriotic predisposition in 
their favour will, if he has any intellectual 
integrity, be forced to admit that they are 
not only worthless from a legal point of view, 
but that the whole tone of them is absolutely 
frivolous. They give the impression of an- 
swers which have been written because, in 
view of the enormous sensation created by 
''J'Accuse," the necessity of some reply to 
the book was felt even in Germany. I only 
regret that the tone and logic of these replies 
must necessarily prejudice thoughtful read- 
ers rather in favour of *'J'Accuse" than 
otherwise. 

I say that I regret this fact because, as a 
German, I do earnestly desire that *'J'Ac- 
cuse" should be honestly and thoroughly re- 
futed, that is to say, that the guiltlessness of 
the German Government in regard to this 
War should be incontestably proved, instead 
of merely asserted. 

94 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

But even after the book has been genuinely 
refuted we must not merely put it on one 
side. The important thing in '' J'Accuse" is 
not that it makes an accusation against Ger- 
many and Austria-Hungary, but, above all, 
that it does make an accusation. The legal 
standpoint taken by ''J'Accuse" in dealing 
with the supposed instigators of the War is, 
in fact, something altogether new in the 
literature of war. Every true friend of peace 
who is resolved to combat war by other means 
than learned theories and systems of brother- 
hood will agree with him in principle. 

Hitherto men have been under the spell of 
the heroes of war. They have looked upon 
war as an inevitable phenomenon which oc- 
curs periodically in the history of nations. 
The decision by battle has been regarded by 
the nations as a decision from God, and they 
have bowed themselves before it without 
question. Although now and then some mur- 
muring was heard when the miseries of war 
became excessive, yet these murmurers never 

95 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

had the courage to treat war as a crime and 
the instigators of war as criminals. The enor- 
mity of the present "War, which has developed 
into a world-catastrophe, promises to crush 
out the popular superstition concerning war. 
At the present day the whole world realises 
that modern war is a senseless stupidity and 
an unspeakable crime, which might easily be 
avoided with the aid of a little goodwill on 
the part of those who hold the reins of gov- 
ernment. At the same time that ' ' J 'Accuse ' ' 
boldly institutes proceedings against the 
originator of the War (in which it is to be 
hoped that he is mistaken concerning the 
guilty party), he breaks finally with the thou- 
sand-year-old tradition of the respect due 
from the nations to the majesty of war. At 
the same time that "J 'Accuse" demands that 
the fate of the human race should henceforth 
be decided by a criminal judge, in accordance 
with universally admitted notions of right, he 
sets the most sacred right of present-day 
humanity (the right to be a free agent) above 
96 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the irresponsible right of the supermen of 
war. In this respect ''J'Accuse" is an ex- 
pression of the national conscience of our 
time. 

In other words, in so far as we are Ger- 
mans, it is a matter of the deepest concern to 
us that the accusations brought by ''J'Ac- 
cuse" against the German Government 
should be adequately refuted. On the other 
hand, in so far as we are pacifists and demo- 
crats, we are anxious that the proceedings 
instituted in '^J'Accuse" should be carried 
through to a logical conclusion. We desire 
to know, and we must know, who was to blame 
for the War (for what was to blame we have 
known long since). 

Starting from these to demands — ^the pa- 
triotic demand for an adequate refutation, 
and the pacifist demand for a systematic con- 
tinuation of the inquiry into the question of 
guilt — I want in the following pages to dis- 
cuss briefly the fashion in which we Germans 
ought to enter upon the discussion of this 
97 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

book, if we do not wish to convey the im- 
pression that Germany is under the intel- 
lectual dominance of mere brawlers. The con- 
ditions requisite for such a discussion are 
intellectual integrity and judicial impartiality 
— that is to say, the conditions observed by 
all honest patriots, historians, seekers after 
truth, and friends of peace. 

I. — The history of the events leading up to 
the War does not in the least belong to the 
discussion. ' ' J 'Accuse ' ' remarks very justly 
at the beginning of his third chapter : * ' The 
history of antecedent events up to 1914 evokes 
the 'strong suspicion' (as they say in criminal 
procedure) that Germany meant to have the 
war earlier or later. . . . Suspicion, how- 
ever, is not the same thing as certainty. That 
which emerges from preceding events as a 
probability is not a proof of guilt. This 
proof of guilt can only be derived from the 
actual circumstances of the case — ^that is to 
say, from the diplomatic documents which 
describe the genesis of the Wo rid- War." 
98 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

We need have no more talk, then, about 
antecedent causes, toasts, books, documents, 
and diplomatic ingenuities dating back to a 
time before July 23rd, 1914. To discuss them 
in this connection is to indulge in futile pot- 
house ranting, since all of them may be 
twisted and turned in such a way as to enable 
everyone to deduce from them just the con- 
clusion that he sets out to deduce. We have 
a terrible example of this sort of thing in 
Professor Schiemann, who tries to make us 
believe that ''preventive" is really ''defen- 
sive," and that "Imperialism" is really 
"Pacifism." 

II.— The sole question which has to be dis- 
cussed and answered is: Who was it who 
proceeded from threats to deeds! Who was 
it who, in the twentieth century, had the 
criminal hardihood to let loose war upon 
Europe, not in words, not in carefully laid 
intrigues, not as a diplomatic threat and a 
possibility on paper, but war as an iron fact, 
99 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

as murder and arson, war in the most hellish 
sense of the word? 

Since these fundamental questions (I can- 
not repeat it too often) can ever be satisfac- 
torily answered by ingeniously compounded 
histories of the events preceding the "War, 
since certain German professors are not 
ashamed to approve the principle of the pre- 
cautionary war, and by judicious lying to turn 
the precautionary war into a defensive war 
(a proceeding which is, of course, utterly 
incompatible with reasonable discussion), we 
can only arrive at an authoritative answer if 
(1) the diplomatic negotiations which imme- 
diately preceded the War are examined with 
judicial impartiality, and if (2) we find some 
standard of right universally valid for all 
parties, from the standpoint of which the 
proceedings may be conducted, and in the 
name of which justice shall be administered. 
Upon these suppositions ''J'Accuse" poses, 
examines, and answers the following ques- 
tions : — 

100 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

What was the reason for the insulting tone 
of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, which 
made demands such as never before in history- 
have been made to an independent State? 

What was the reason for the blunt refusal 
of Austria when the Powers of the Triple 
Entente begged for an extension of time for 
the Serbian answer! 

Why was the Serbian answer (which aston- 
ished the whole of Europe by its humility, and 
therefore promised a complete success for 
Austrian diplomacy) none the less refused by 
Austria? 

Why would not Austria condescend to dis- 
cuss the only points in the Serbian answer 
(5 and 6) which remained in dispute? 

Why was Sir Edward Grey's proposal for 
a conference of the Ambassadors of the four 
Powers who were not involved in the dispute 
eagerly accepted by all the States with the 
exception of Germany and Austria-Hungary? 
Why did Germany declare (German White 
101 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

Book, p. 9) that Austria ''could not be sum- 
moned before a European tribunal"? 

Why did Austria declare, when Grey 
showed the absurdity of this objection, that 
**she must decline the English proposal" 
(German White Book, p. 9) f 

Why, when Germany had declined Grey's 
proposal and had proposed instead a direct 
negotiation between Vienna and Petrograd, 
did Count Berchtold declare to the Russian 
Ambassador that ''Austria would neither 
recede from her position nor enter into any 
discussion in regard to the Serbian Note" 
(English Blue Book, Russian Orange Book, 
German White Book), and in this way nullify 
the proposal of his own ally? 

Why did Herr von Jagow make no reply 
whatever to the proposal made by Grey two 
days after Austria's declaration of war to 
Serbia — ^namely, that Austria should satisfy 
herself with the occupation of Belgrade and 
the neighbouring districts as a pledge for a 
satisfactory settlement of her demands and 
102 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

allow to the other Powers time and opportu- 
nity for mediation between Austria and 
Russia? 

Why did Austria herself make no answer 
either to Grey's first proposal, or to Sazo- 
nof's first proposal, while Herr von Jagow 
only replied curtly to the first suggestion for 
an agreement made by Sazonof (Russian 
Orange Book, No. 60) that it could not be 
accepted by Austria ? 

Why did Austria and Germany make no 
reply whatever to Sazonof 's second proposal 
(Russian Orange Book, No. 67), which is in 
the nature of an amalgamation with Grey's 
proposal? 

Why did Germany never definitely counsel 
her Austrian ally to moderation in her con- 
flict with Serbia, although it is actually ad- 
mitted in the German White Book *Hhat in 
this we were fully aware that in the con- 
tingency of an attack by Austria-Hungary 
upon Serbia Russia, too, might be brought 
into the arena, and that we ourselves, in 
103 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

consequence of our treaty obligations, might 
also be drawn into a war'"? 

"Why did Germany speak with such insist- 
ence of a localisation of the Austro-Serbian 
dispute when, from the above sentence, it is 
clear that a localisation was an absolute im- 
possibility, and that therefore salvation 
would have to be sought in its internationali- 
sation? 

Why was the dispatch of the insulting 
Austrian Note to Serbia approved in Berlin, 
although it was realised that Russia might 
intervene and that the result might be a 
European war? 

Why did not Germany recommend to 
Vienna Grey's request that the humble an- 
swer from Serbia might at least be allowed to 
serve as a basis for further negotiations? 

Why does the German White Book afford 
absolutely no definite proofs that (as the 
German Government subsequently asserted) 
Germany tried to pacify Vienna? 

Why was Germany continually harping on 
104 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the antagonism between Vienna and Petro- 
grad, although it was perfectly clear that the 
difficulty was not at Petrograd, but at Vienna, 
and that Russia could not negotiate until 
Vienna had adopted a more conciliatory atti- 
tude? 

Why does the German White Book (p. 9) 
expressly declare that Germany approved the 
principle of Grey's proposal for a conference 
of the four Powers, while it makes no men- 
tion of the fact that the Triple Entente were 
prepared to embody this principle in any 
form that Germany might desire? 

Why does the German White Book omit the 
Czar's telegram of July 29th, in which the 
latter makes the proposal to the German 
Emperor that the Austro-Serbian dispute 
should be laid before the Court of Arbitration 
at The Hague? 

Why was this important proposal neither 
answered by the German Government nor 
referred to in the German Press? 

Why did not the German Chancellor an- 
105 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

swer Grey's invitation (English Blue Book, 
No. 101) appealing for such a joint effort 
in the interest of peace as had proved effec- 
tive in the late Balkan crisis ? 

Why did Germany proclaim that the situa- 
tion threatened a danger of war, and why 
did she dispatch to Russia on July 31st a 12- 
hour ultimatum, at a moment when the dip- 
lomatic negotiations were still in full progress 
and the world in general had gained the im- 
pression that things had taken a turn for the 
better? 

Why did Germany, on July 31st, demand 
from Russia a demobilisation, while she did 
not make the same demand, at any rate in a 
modified form, of her Austrian ally, although 
she knew that the latter had likewise mo- 
bilised on the morning of July 31st, and thus 
might be quite sure in advance that Russia 
would not fall in with her request? 

Why, above all, was it Germany who made 
this demand, and not Austria? Why did 
Germany, who hitherto had appealed so ex- 
106 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

pressly for a localisation of the dispute, sud- 
denly interfere in it, thereby herself inter- 
nationalising the struggle and to a certain 
extent adopting an attitude more Austrian 
than Austria? 

These are a few (but not all) of the pre- 
liminary questions which "J 'Accuse," on the 
authority of the official documents belonging 
to the period of the critical eleven days, puts 
forward and examines before finally coming 
to the answer to the main question, which 
results, according to his view, in a verdict of 
''guilty" on Germany and Austria-Hungary. 

It is possible (and as a German I wish with 
all my heart that it may be so) that '' J'Ac- 
cuse," after the fashion of all public prose- 
cutors, has only gathered from the official 
documents just what, as a result of his politi- 
cal views, he wanted to gather from them. 
But this can only be proved against him by 
means of no less convincing documents and 
no less convincing methods and reasoning 
107 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

than those upon which he bases his accusa- 
tions.^ 

' In reply to a question of the deputy Liebknecht, in the 
session of the Eeichstag of December 14th, 1915, whether 
the Government was willing to produce the official docu- 
ments having relation to the outbreak of the War, and to 
institute a parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, the Secre- 
tary of State, von Jagow, with the approval of the House, 
made the following statement: "The Government does not 
intend to recommend the institution of a parliamentary 
Commission of Inquiry. The responsibility and the expiation 
concern only our opponents." 

We do not understand. In more than one quarter the 
German Government is accused of being responsible for the 
War; for seventeen months she has been asserting her inno- 
cence, and declaring over and over again that Germany was 
the victim of a treacherous attack, and that she is waging 
a sacred war of self-defence. And yet now she indignantly 
repudiates the proposal for a serious investigation! Herr 
von Jagow ought to realise that it is not sufficient to keep 
on merely asserting the guilt of the enemies of Germany; 
this guilt has got to be proved by documentary evidence. 
The dogmatic tone in which the German Minister has de- 
claimed all too frequently concerning the guilt of others, 
the bluntness with which he has refused any closer investi- 
gation into the question of guilt, have often produced in 
neutral countries the painful impression of wilful evasion 
and indirect admission of guilt. We hope sincerely that, 
in order to wipe out this painful impression, Herr von Jagow 
wiU shortly be prepared to agree to the institution of a Com- 
mission of Inquiry. A man with a clear conscience (and 
we do not doubt that Herr von Jagow 's conscience is clear) 
must seize every opportunity which offers itself for the 

108 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

We have seen that neither the professor 
nor the academician, nor the neutral nor the 
Socialist, has seriously examined a single 
one of the questions brought forward by 
''J'Accuse." The same may be said of all 
the other ''answers" which have been pub- 
lished in Germany. The manner in which the 
authors of these answers set to work produces 
the very unfortunate impression that any 
serious discussion of the questions raised in 
the book would be painful to them, and that, 
in legal questions, they are incapable of 
counting up to three. With the pathetic ges- 
ture of superiority of the outraged patriot, 
they cry ' ' Shame ! " and ' ' Murder ! ' ' upon the 
supposed traitor to his country, and then 

demonstration of his innocence. One of the most important 
of these opportunities is offered by a parliamentary Com- 
mission of Inquiry. 

On the other hand, it is devoutly to be wished that the 
German national representatives should cease to clap their 
approval, when the rules of modern legal procedure and the 
highest privileges of Parliament are so openly trodden under 
foot, as they have been by Herr von Jagow in this instance. 

109 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

start composing their ''Histories of the 
Events leading up to the War." 

Now an accused person standing in the dock 
may very well be defended by pointing out his 
lack of education, his hereditary disabilities, 
his abnormal way of life, and other defects 
of his intellectual, physical, or social condi- 
tion. The counsel for the defendant may 
rouse the sympathies of the jury by a moving 
description of the wretchedness of the pris- 
oner's family life, of his hunger, and of the 
desperate state of mind which drove him to 
the act. But the judge, even if, after an 
examination into the antecedent history of 
the prisoner (which is naturally presented by 
the public prosecutor in quite a different 
light from that in which it is presented by 
the counsel for the defendant), he becomes 
convinced of the presence of extenuating cir- 
cumstances, will none the less draw a very 
sharp line between these antecedent circum- 
stances and the crime itself. He will say: 
This man contained within himself a thou- 
110 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

sand criminal instincts and motives for crime. 
Nevertheless, in the legal sense, he was inno- 
cent up to the day on which he committed his 
crime. We know that within every individ- 
ual, within every party, race, class, or nation, 
there slumber potentialities and elements of 
crime. But if we were to accept the evidence 
of mere suspicion we should have to take the 
whole world into custody. Therefore it is not 
until it has actually been committed that an 
act can be considered a crime demanding that 
we should take action in the name of public 
peace and security. 

Therefore we repeat once more : We do not 
wish to know either who is the author of 
^'J'Accuse," or what are his views, or how 
his book came into being; nor yet whether 
this or that State had this or that reason for 
mistrusting its neighbour (the reasons are 
thousandfold on all sides). But we do wish 
to know whether '' J'Accuse" resorted to any 
dishonest methods in his analysis and valua- 
tion of the official documents (in the third 
111 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

chapter), or whether, on the contrary, his 
accusations and arguments are legally sound. 
"We wish to know who, in those critical eleven 
days, actually committed the criminal act of 
provoking the War. 

Meanwhile every other question is a side- 
issue. If it is made clear, as the result of an 
unprejudiced investigation, either that the 
author of ''J'Accuse" was not impartial in 
selecting his documents, or that he gave them 
a wrong interpretation, then there is still time 
to pass sentence on him. But until this evi- 
dence has been secured we have no right to 
do so. 

III. — From what has been said above, it 
follows as a matter of course that any idea of 
the justification of a ''preventive" war is 
under no circumstances admissible. It is 
surely a disgrace that, in the twentieth cen- 
tury, there should still be men who can seri- 
ously and ''scientifically" support this no- 
tion. And it is a disgrace to'us Germans 
that countless German scholars should have 
112 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

come forward to defend it. Bismarck him- 
self, who knew the ins and outs of these ques- 
tions, more than once, with a clearness which 
admits of no misunderstanding, rebuked 
those criminal blockheads who in the 'eighties 
appealed to him to embark on a ''preventive" 
war against France. 

But the main concern of us modern pacifists 
and democrats is this : In the twentieth cen- 
tury there ought no longer, under any cir- 
cumstances, to be two morals — one for the 
people at large, and the other for the State 
and its princes. Machiavelli is dead, dead 
finally and for ever! A nation, a State, a 
dynasty, are at the present day subject to the 
same moral notions and the same laws as the 
private citizen. They must conduct them- 
selves like honest men, and if from this stand- 
ard they are found wanting they must, in the 
name of public peace and security, be ar- 
raigned before the court of justice just like 
any private criminal. They must not be al- 
lowed to plead in their defence any other 
113 



t 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

reasons than those which are valid in criminal 
law. For at the present day there is no 
longer any raison d'etat, any special law 
applicable to the State endowed with undis- 
puted power to overrule the standards of 
ordinary private morality. Any vestige of 
it which still lurks in diplomatic documents 
and in the brains of certain scholars will be 
finally exterminated as a result of this War. 

/Henceforth there will reign in Europe only 
one universally valid moral law, to which all 
alike are subject — the king and his dynasty, 

. the citizen and his fatherland. 

Discussions concerning divine rights, 
higher reasons, necessities-which-cannot-be- 
named-here, political imponderabilities, spe- 
cial privileges of the supermen — in short, the 
whole mediaeval lumber and rubbish of fait du 
prince, raison d'etat, &c. — are to be ruled 
finally and emphatically out of court. True, 
there still exist a host of learned bqnzg^ who 
kneel before the purple of the tyrant, pre- 
pared to support the ''scientific" justifiability 
114 




BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

of anything which their ruler may see fit.) 
True, there exists the danger that these" 
'beamed authorities" on State law, support- 
ed by the Press, the police, and the rabble, 
may attempt to stifle the voice of the national 
conscience and to convert the legal proceed- 
ings into a comedy for the diversion of their 
masters. Yet it is to be hoped that, after 
this horrible catastrophe, all the serious 
scholars and scientists of the world will com- 
bine together to close once and for all the 
mouths of these repti les, for on this point at 
least there must surely be absolute unanimity 
among all the decent members of the human 
race. "What would be the result, for instance, 
of our admitting the plea of a ''precaution- 
ary" measure as an excuse for the declara- 
tion of war by a State? All our modern 
notions of blame, responsibility, law, and pun- 
ishment would therewith collapse completely. 
For then it would be open to every thief and 
assassin to come forward with the assertion 
that he had been obliged to steal and murder, 
115 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

because lie knew very well that otherwise his 
victim (who wore a revolver in his belt, be- 
haved in a suspicious manner, and so forth) 
would have attacked him. Or some enter- 
prising '^ Captain" of Kopenick^ might or- 
ganise a robber-band on the plea that he was 
a superman with a lofty mission, and hence 
not subject to stupid bourgeois laws an"*d 
regulations, which have no application to such 
supermen as himself. 

A moment's rej9ection suffices to convince 
us that the notion of a ''preventive" war 
passes into the realm of phantasy, and that, 
if we are to admit it as a valid excuse for a 
State, there will cease to be any question of 
crime, but only of acts committed either in 
alleged self-defence or by alleged supermen. 

It is, as we have said, a matter for regret 
that, in the twentieth century, in the father- 

^Kopenick is a small town near Berlin where in 1906 a 
rogue named Wilhelm Voigt appeared in a captain's uni- 
form, and, by the mere effect of this disguise, overawed the 
Burgomaster into handing him over the contents of the 
town treasury. — Ed. 

116 




BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

land of modern legal science, we should still 
be compelled to force such self-evident truths 
as these upon the attention of those who deem 
themselves the most distinguished represent- 
atives of Germanism. Will they never under- 
stand that it is they who have earned for us 
the epithet of ' ' barbarians ' ' ? Will the Bern- 
hardis, Keims, Schiemanns, Gelbsattels, Rohr- 
bachs, Reventlows, Lassons, Hardens,* and 

* Friedrich A. J. von Bernhardi, born 1849 in Petrograd ; 
an ex-cavalry general, and author of the now celebrated 
book, * ' Germany and the Next War. ' ' 

August Alexander Keim, born 1845 in Hessen, is a retired 
Major-General; an authority on military history, especially 
in regard to Napoleon. He was a contributor on this subject 
to the "Cambridge Modern History." 

Dr. Paul Eohrbach, born in Lithuania, 1869, is author of 
a German ' ' imperialistic ' ' work, ' ' Der deutsche Gedanke in 
der Welt, ' ' which has been very widely read in recent years. 

Ernst, Graf zu Keventlow, a retired naval officer, born 
1869 at Husum, is an author of some works of importance, 
including "Die englisehe Seemacht" (1906). He has been 
well-known since the War as an advocate of " f rightful- 
ness. " He is on the staff of the Deutsche Tagesseitung. 

Adolf Lasson, Professor of Philosophy at Berlin, born 
1832 at Altstrelitz, has distinguished himself since the War 
began by utterances so violent and so arrogant as to cause 
remonstrances even in Germany. Herzog describes him as 
a "zweihundertjahriger Mummiengreis, " and declares that 

117 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

their like, never feel ashamed to hawk about 
such' theories as these? 

Anyone who, like Herr Professor Schie- 
mann, has the ill-judged temerity to answer 
to the book "J 'Accuse": "Admitted, Ger- 
many did declare the War, but she was 
obliged to forestall her neighbours, since 
otherwise her neighbours would have fore- 
stalled her," deserves to have his house burnt 
over his head and then to receive the derisive 
explanation: "What else do you expect, my 
good fellow? Your conduct had been rousing 
my suspicions for a long time. You are a sly 
rascal. Your house was the resort of people 
who excited my disapproval. Besides . . . 
and then ... as I have said, I could not wait 
until the plot which you had been hatching 

Ms lectures on philosophy have long been the mockery of 
his pupils. 
/ Maximilian Harden is the pen-name of a famous erratic 
Jewish journalist, editor of Die Zukunft. He was born in 
Berlin, 1861. His real name is Max Witkowski, He has 
glorified the present War expressly on the ground that it is 
a war of aggression and conquest for the establishment of 
a great German Empire. — Ed. 

118 




BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

against me should be quite complete; I was 
obliged to forestall you as a measure of pru- 
dence. A collision between us was bound to 
come in any case; it was 4n the air/ My 
action was thus a measure of self-defence, 
dear sir, a stern and absolute necessity." 

Every reasonable man will admit that such 
logic as this cannot be admitted in the pres- 
ent century, and that therefore it is just as 
vicious and outworn in its application to a 
State as it would be in the case of a private 
individual. 

IV. — There is a certain class of very ad- 
vanced thinkers who refuse to lay the blame 
for the outbreak of the War upon individuals, 
and who take infinite pains to shift the re- 
sponsibility upon systems, inner causes, ideas, 
tendencies, higher powers — ^in short, so-called 
''imponderabilities." For instance, Dr. A. H. 
Fried,^ one of the leading German pacifists, 

" Alfred Fried, born in Vienna, 1864, founded the German 
Peace Society in 1892, and is author of many works on 
disarmament, international arbitration, and peace propa- 
ganda. — Ed. 

XX9 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

in his latest book, ''The Restoration of 
Europe" ("Europaische Wiederlierstel- 
lung"), declares that the "World- War ''was 

)C the logical consequence of the peace which we 
then possessed." Other pacifists, especially 
snivelling theologians, endeavour to hood- 

V wink us with the notion that we were all to 
blame for the War, because we had lived and 
thought and worked in such-and-such a fash- 
ion. Others again — for example, the Marx 
school of Socialists — come to us with the ark 
of the covenant of the hallowed Marx,^ and 
declare that the War was the inevitable re- 
sult of an accursed capitalistic society. And 
so on. So many parties, so many ''impon- 
derabilities," severally responsible for the 
War. 

Thus these pacifists and Socialists, with 
varying degrees of lucidity, and in accord- 

*Karl Marx, son of a Jewish lawyer, was born 1818 in 
Trier. He edited the Socialist paper Vorwdrts from 1844 
onwards. His work, "Das Capital" (1867), has supplied 
modern Socialism with its theoretic basis. He died 1867 in 
London. — Ed. 

120 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ance with their several political standpoints, 
declare the War to be a moral, social, demo- 
graphic, or some other sort of necessity in the 
world's history. Apart from the notorious 
Imperialists and a few professors of theol- 
ogy, who look upon war as a divine institu- 
tion and, like Moltke, scoff af eternal peace" 
as a dream, ''and not even a beautiful 
dream," all these people are of one mind in 
regarding the War as a crime against hu- 
. manity and in insisting that its recurrence 
/"must absolutely be prevented. But since they 
j cannot, or will not, or dare not conceive that 
. I the War was brought about by individual 
! men, they produce all kinds of metaphysical 
\ explanations for it, and fancy that it would 
■ be sufficient to alter the system, &c., which in 
Vtheir opinion generated the War. 

There is something about these advanced 
German intellectuals which recalls the actor 
who appears on the boards as a hero directing 
the movements of armies, while in the privacy 
of his home he is only a poor henpecked hus- 
121 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

band. Whereas they plume themselves be- 
fore all Europe on the boldness of their ideas, 
the sublimity of their culture, or the pro- 
fundity of their erudition, and appear to be 
directing all the hosts of progressives and 
revolutionaries, at home, in the privacy of 
Frau Grermania's menage, they are not per- 
mitted the tiniest suspicion of a republican 
, idea. In the midst of their ''intellectual 
treasures" and the blessings of their culture, 
they preserve a submissive silence on the 
subject of those private domestic miseries of 
which they are perfectly conscious, but of 
which they dare not speak openly. They are 
forbidden to think out to a logical conclusion 
the possibilities implied in Germany's still 
feudal constitution, for instance, to investi- 
gate its influence in determining war and 
peace as thoroughly and systematically as 
other imponderabilities. Their objective 
method of writing history entirely ignores the 
fact that almost the whole of German history 
(with the possible exception of the War of 
122 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

/Liberation) is a history, not of a nation, but 
* 1 only of dynasties J They cannot, or dare not, 
perceive that throughout the world's history 
the interests of a dynasty have always been 
in opposition to the interests of the people. 
Although the history of Prussia during the 
last hundred years furnishes a continuous 
chain of blatant proofs that the freedom of 
the dynasty can never be the same thing as 
the freedom of the people, they dare not so 
much as hint at this axiom, and even fall into 
a rage if anyone mentions it. 

The consequence of this peculiar fustian 
heroism is seen in the sublime products of 
German scholarship and German intellectual 
gymnastics, behind "the resplendent haze of 
which lurks the fear of Germania's tyranny. 

' Even to-day they are still declaring that Germany is 
fighting for her freedom and culture, for the German idea, 
for free development, and other ideals. On the other hand, 
the German Chancellor and the Norddeutsche Allgemeine 
Zeitung replied to the question, "What are the Germans 
fighting for?" with an enthusiastic "For King and Coun- 
try ! ' ' The whole world continues to ask, but the learned 
German progressives remain silent. 

123 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

Even if in their hearts they regard the Ger- 
man constitution and German politics as ante- 
diluvian institutions, they none the less dis- 
cover some bold and progressive-sounding 
foreign word which delivers them from the 
painful necessity of calling the thing by its 
right name. Frau Germania may treat them 
as subjects whose political rights evoke the 
derision even of Serbian farm-boys; they 
only talk the more loudly of their 'intellec- 
tual treasures" and raise up yet more splen-| 
did palaces of ideas in the cheerless desert -^ 
of aristocratic and autocratic omnipotenceJ 
When people like Professor Lasson assert 
that we are the freest nation in the world be- 
cause we understand best how to obey, they 
fail to perceive that this fact involves any 
blame. And how desperately embarrassed 
they are if anyone inquires quite disingenu- 
ously; ''And the republic? Is it not the 
logical consequence of all your science, the 
rational crown of your culture? Is not the 
republican form of constitution a stage in 
124 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the general ascent of humanity? Can that be 
a fatherland in the best sense of the word 
where the people do not govern themselves 
and proudly and freely direct the course of 
their own history?" Either they fall into a 
rage at such ** totally unscientific" questions, 
or else they show signs of nervousness, and 
answer loud enough for Frau Germania to be 
able to hear it in the kitchen: "Deutschland 
uber Alles! It is the HohenzoUems who have 
made Germany great." 

This learned German wariness and circum- 
spection which for centuries has roused the 
derision of the whole world could not resist 
the opportunity afforded by the War for fa- 
vouring us with a thousand-and-one meta- 
physical theories of its origin. The philo- 
sophical ingenuity of our German scholars is 
as astonishing as the systematic way in which 
they invariably avoid going to the root of 
things or calling them by their right names. 
For to declare in so many words that war 
■^ is the hereditary trade of despots, and that, 

125 






BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

in the modern world, this ghastly trade can 
only be plied with the aid of antiquated con- 
ceptions, such as, in the case of Europe, only 
survive in Russia, Turkey, Austria-Hungary, 
and Germany, is forbidden to the representa- 
tives of German civilisation. If, for instance, 
the Haeckels and Ostwalds and Euckens^ 
undertook to pursue their ''monism" to such 
an honest and logical conclusion as they have 
taught us to do in the case of religious and 
cosmic problems, they would be forced to 
admit that there is also a ''dualism" in the 
politics of absolute governments, and that it 
is just this "dualism" which is more danger- 

* Ernst Haeckel, Professor of Zoology at Jena, was born 
1834 at Potsdam. His ' ' Eiddle of the Universe, ' ' in which 
he develops a monistic theory, regarding matter as funda- 
mentally intelligent, is well known in England. He has 
written with exceptional violence against the Allies. 

Geheimer Hofrath Wilhelm Ostwald, born 1853, at Riga, 
is a distinguished chemist, and editor of the Monist. He 
has written much on scientific and philosophic subjects. 

Eudolf Eucken, Professor of Philosophy at Jena, was born 

in 1846 at Aurich, in East Friesland. He received the 

Nobel Prize in 1908. He was regarded as the great ethical 

teacher of modern Germany, but supported the attack ou 

; Belgium. — Ed. 

126 




BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

ous to the peace of the world than any na- 
tional antagonisms or system of armed 
peace. In the same way, the Scheidemanns, 
Siidekums, Heines,^ and their like, unless they 
intend to pursue some ostrich-like policy, 
must admit that one single feudal constitution 
must be in principle more dangerous to the 
peace of the world than ten capitalistic ad- 
ministrations taken together. 

For war is never a "logical consequence"! 
(as Dr. Pried suggests) or a "necessary! 
result" (as the Marx school maintain). War I 4( 
is a will . Not the will of a revengeful God I 
nor of any other supernatural power, but the I 
will to power of individual men . This simple J 
truth, however "unscientific" it may sound 

"PMlipp Scheidemann, a printer by trade, born in Cassel 
1865, joined the Socialist Party and entered the Eeichstag, 
of which he has been Vice-President. 

Albert O. W. Siidekum, born 1871 at Wolfenbiittel, is a 
Phil.D. and Socialist member of the Keichstag. He is author 
of various works on social subjects, and of "Darwin's 
Leben und Lehre," 1891. 

Wolfgang K. W. Heine, a lawyer, bom 1861 at Posen, en- 
tered the Reichstag 1903. He is author of several juristic 
works, and is a member of the Socialist Party. — Ed, 

127 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

frto many of my learned colleagues of the pen, 
is none the less the only genuine truth which 
we do possess in regard to war. It is as true 
to-day as it was in the time of Machiavelli. 
The exuberant will to power of the few indi- 
viduals who still, by virtue of antiquated con- 
stitutions, enjoy an absolute political power 
— that is the virus of war. That and that 
alone has the power to transform the latent 
war-madness existing in certain classes of the 
population into an acute war-crisis. It is 
true, of course, that the struggle of capitalis- 
tic interests (as the Marxists assert) or na- 
tional ideas (as the ^'bourgeois ideologues" 
declare) may help in kindling these bloody 
conflagrations. It is equally true that certain 
systems and tendencies and conditions — for 
example, secret diplomacy, a standing army, 
corruption of the Press by the caterers for 
war, &c. — ^may help materially to pave the 
way for war. But who can fail to see that all 
these things — capitalism, chauvinism, i^ili- 
tarism; policy of expansion, dreams of re- 
128 






BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

venge, secret diplomacy, &c.— are harmless 
and innocent until some absolute despot has 
the hardihood— the criminal hardihood— to 
convert the idea into a deed! It is not im- 
ponderabilities, tendencies of the age, Gods, 
or nations that set the match to the train 
which leads to these explosives, but individual 
men. The world's history furnishes abun- 
dant proof that the step from the menace to 
the act of war has, for the most part, been 
taken by ambitious individuals who have 
fished for laurels in the blood of the nations. 
The wars which have actually been deter- 
mined upon by the people themselves, and 
which, therefore, have been truly sacred wars 
(for instance, the war of the Swiss Confed- 
eration against Austria, the French Revolu- 
tion against Prussia and Austria, and the 
Prussian War of Liberation), have been de- 
fensive wars in the best sense of the word. 

In regard to the present World-War, no 
less, the whole world is possessed with the 
firm conviction that it was desired by indi- 
129 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

vidual men, and that at a given moment it 
lay in the power of these individuals to pre- 
vent it. Up to three days before the War 
large meetings were held in Berlin, Paris, 
London, Vienna, and Petrograd for the pur- 
pose of protesting against the War, and all 
the most advanced individuals and newspa- 
pers of the whole world insisted with one 
voice that all the nations were filled with the 
unanimous and ardent desire that peace 
should be preserved. From this, as well as^ 
from a hundred other circumstances belong- 
ing to those critical eleven days, it is evident 
that the nations were not swept into War by 
any supernatural power or other impondera- 
bility, but by men, men subject to the same 
physical appetites and needs as you and I, 
and who, by means of their unlimited and 
irresponsible power over the police and the 
army, criminally overruled the clearly ex- 
pressed desire for peace of the nations con- 
cerned. 
Moreover, we must consider that this op- 
130 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

pression is accompanied at the present day by 
infinitely more hypocrisy than was the case in 
antiquity or the Middle Ages. For, up to the 
time of the French Revolution, war was re- 
garded as the uncontested and uncontestable 
right of God-ordained princes. The latter 
waged war admittedly for private interests, 
just as a business man embarks on specula- 
tions which may procure him advantage. For 
this purpose they hired mercenary soldiers, 
and they never dreamed for a moment of 
appealing to the patriotism of their subjects. 
They plied their war-trade like honest des- 
pots, and so long as they only enforced the 
business of hacking and thrusting and shoot- 
ing on those who rendered these services 
voluntarily and for pay, they had, after all, a 
perfect right to pass the time with these war- 
like adventures. 

Modern wars are entirely differentiated 

from these early wars by the fact that they 

involve the employment of forced soldiers 

and of patriotic catchwords. Insomuch as 

131 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

I they compel millions of men to hack and 
thrust and shoot — ^men who, like you and me, 
feel an unconquerable loathing for these 
things, modern wars constitute the most 
criminal oppression of the masses that has 

iQver taken place on the face of God's earth. 
It might have been expected that, with the 
substitution of national armies for mercenary 
troops, with the collapse of the old form of 
State, and with the new ideal of the modern 
constitutional State, the absolute right of the 
ruler in the matter of war and peace would 
disappear and its place be taken by a popular 
court of investigation. Unfortunately, this 
was not the case. It is the most monstrous, 
the most criminal, the most shameful stain 
upon our civilisation that, in spite of the fun- 
damental alteration in the conception of the 
State and in the military organisation, in 
regard to the technique (if I may use the 
expression) of the causation and declaration 
of war nothing has been changed. Now, as 
before, the transition from a latent to an 
132 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

actual state of war depends upon the will of 
individuals; that is to say, these individuals 
adopt just the same attitude towards that 
''triumph" of the modern world — compul- 
sory military service for all citizens in the 
name of a formerly unheard-of love for the 
fatherland — as the despots of the Middle 
Ages adopted towards their mercenaries. In \ 
this matter the civilised nations of Europe 
have not yet attained the right of self-govern- 
ment of the Red Indians. The Indians decide 
the question of war in a solemn war-council, 
in which every member of the tribe has a 
seat and a vote. But the civilised nations of J 
Europe, although they allow their Grovem 
ments to impose upon them universal mili 
tary service, none the less (who can solve this \ 
mystery?) leave the decision in regard to war 
and peace — just as they did in the Middle 
Ages — to their chieftains. If the latter con-^ 
sider war to be necessary (and even at the 
present day they may be pursuing private 
interests by this means !), it is not until after- 
133 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 



wards that they inform the members of their 
tribe that they have resolved upon war, with 
the subjoined threat that further discussion 
is now not only superfluous, but would be 
high treason^ since the Fatherland is in 
danger. 

For all these reasons modern war is not 
only the most terrible crime on the face of 
God's earth, but also (look at it how you 
will) the work of individual men, who take 
upon themselves the whole responsibility be- 
fore God and men, for they have never lifted 
a finger towards the sharing of this terrible 
responsibility with their peoples.^** 

f' "In the session of the Eeichstag of December 14th, 1915, 
the Secretary of State, von Jagow, in reply to a question 
of the deputy Liebknecht, whether the Government was 
prepared to substitute for secret diplomacy a foreign policy 
subject to the control of publicity and to entrust the decision 
concerning war and peace to a national assembly, declared, 
with considerable asperity, that ' ' the Government was not 
' prepared to propose such an alteration of the constitution 
■ as had been demanded. ' ' This is as much as to say : It is 
a matter of indifference to us what the people want; the 
Government alone is supreme judge in the question of war 
and peace. The people will only have "equal rights" if the 
mysterious meanderings of diplomacy should chance to result 

134 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

r Let us have done once and for all with those 
(futile theories and grovelling metaphysics 
/ according to which war is a necessity in the 
world's history, a logical consequence or a 
necessary result, and so forth, while the peo- 
ple who resolve and declare it are represented 
as the helpless tools of higher powers. Not 
only do we emphatically refuse to discuss 
such ''imponderabilities" and "incommensu- 
rable factors," but we declare flatly that all 
thga£LJZ£hp in the twentieth century continue 
to make use of such arguments as these con- 
stitute themselves thejirotejetacS-Md-^n-^-i- 
ians of the war-fury . For by their generali- 
sations they dilute the question of responsi- 
bility until any answer sufficiently clear and 

in a war. Since Herr von Jagow declines in the name of the 
German Government to submit the decision in regard to 
war and peace to the people (who, none the less, now as 
before, are compelled to universal military service), it is 
not to be wondered at if we pacifists are more determined 
than ever in tracking down the personal responsibility for 
the War. Von Jagow 's harsh refusal of Liebknecht's sug- 
gestion is a proof that the War has been, and is intended 
to remain, the private affair of the Government. 

135 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

definite to imply a practical application is 
rendered impossible. It would be difficult^to 
afford greater satisfaction to the despots of 
war than by inventing the theory that war is 
'^ not the offspring of any human progenitors, 
but that it has been inflicted upon humanity 

I either by the grace of God or the machina- 
tions of the devil. In such mystical certifi- 
cates of origin as these there is implied an 
indirect appeal to the war-despots and their 
successors that they should always keep in 
mind their supernatural mission, which re- 
quires that now and again humanity should 
be steeped in carnage, since otherwise it 
would be smothered in slothful peace; and 
I there is, moreover, no question of any per- 
I' sonal responsibility for the War. 

We have had enough of such foul hocus- 
pocus^ we ask to have done with such paltry 
metaphysics, which genuine reflection reveals 
as an abject grovelling before the great ones 
of the earth. We wish to know who are 
the men who have abused to such terrible 
136 





BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

effect the mediaeval privileges which they 
unfortunately continue to enjoy in the modern 
world in matters of war and peace. Bv sum - 
moning and seTi|.eyip,iTi p ^ these men before the 
bar_of_justice we.shall jbequeath to our, and 
their, sons a token that from this time hence- 
forth a new era has set in, an era of free self- 
government of free nations. 

V. — It is clear that, in discussing this ques- 
tion of guilt, every conventional patriotic sen- 
timent and prejudice must be laid aside. The 
wars of early times only concerned two or 
three countries, and the question of guilt (if 
it came up for consideration) was the private 
affair of the individual nation concerned, 
which settled it as it was able or disposed to 
settle it. The present War, on the contrary, 
is a European catastrophe. Therefore, the 
question of guilt is no longer a national, but 
anju^Lernational concern. Under these circum- 
stances it would be childish to attempt to con- 
duct the trial from a German, French, Eng- 
lish, Russian, or Austrian point of view. 
137 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

Since the War is European (indeed, we might 
almost say universal), the inquiry into the 
question of who is responsible can only be 
conducted '4n the name of Europe." Any- 
one, therefore, who is incapable of laying 
aside his patriotic prepossessions while the 
inquiry is in progress, on behalf of the inter- 
ests of Europe as a whole, ought not to take 
any part in the discussion. 

We are far from joining hands with those 
world-embracing revolutionaries who main- 
tain (or have maintained) that the national 
idea is a piece of '^bourgeois stupidity," and 
that it is all one whether the workman be ex- 
ploited by a Eussian Grand Duke, or a Junker 
from east of the Elbe, or a republican poten- 
tate of commerce, since the exploitation is the 
same in each case. Rather are we convinced 
that love of country lives on in the heart of 
even the most crazy internationalist, if only in 
the shape of an inner partiality, a memory of 
home, a constant reversion of his deepest and 
most intimate thoughts to the land where his 
138 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

childhood was spent. But it is a long way ^, 
from this natural sentiment to the blood-and- 
furj-breathing fanaticism of the super-pa,|fi-, 
ots. It is demanded of civilised human beings 
in the twentieth century that, for the sake of 
their love for the fatherland, they should 
transform themselves into infuriated fanatics 
and traitors to their own nature. We are 
patriots in heart and soul, as long as we are 
not summoned to renounce our own private 
zeal for justice, truth, reason, and peace. 
That hinter-Pomeranian village magistrate 
who, for the reception of exalted personages, 
hastened to garb himself as a harlequin be- 
cause some wag had assured him that "those 
gentlemen ' ' had an extreme partiality for this 
costume, ought not to be accepted as the 
model of a perfect patriot. Patriotism and 
servility bear the same relation to one another 
as religion and superstition. It is not to be 
desired that we should make a fetish of our 
Fatherland. Anyone for whom the cry ' ' The 
Fatherland is in danger" signifies a summons 
139 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

to renounce forthwith his critical faculty, his 
scientific caution, and his unbiassed search 
after truth, is no true patriot. And anyone 
who still finds words for the deification of his 
country's Government even when that Gov- 
ernment is manifestly at fault, even when it 
is manifestly flouting all the laws of humanity 
(such a case is not difficult to conceive), is 
no patriot, but a miserable slave. A Govern- 
ment ought not to be a machine for dictating 
ideas to a nation. Was it not a King of Prus- 
sia who proclaimed himself the first servant 
of his State 1 We are not the spiritual slaves 
of our Government, but our Government is 
the first servant of the nation. 

I have already remarked that love of coun- 
try and bondage of the mind are not the same 
thing. Is it possible that, in the Fatherland 
of thinkers and logicians, we are to be denied 
the right to investigate the question of re- 
sponsibility for this World- War in just the 
same way as any other question 1 Are we, in 
order to be esteemed patriots, to exercise our 
140 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

critical faculty and pursue our search after 
truth only on the lines prescribed by the 
Government ? Is it possible that, in the twen- 
tieth century, a Government should dare to 
pronounce itself infallible, and to draw up 
articles of faith the non-observance of which 
is to brand a citizen as an ''unpatriotic scoun- 
drel"? 

(f This cannot and must not be. For just 
because I am a German I would not, upon any 
inducement in the world, set my country 
higher than truth. The man who continues 
to defend the Government of his country, even 
when that Government is manifestly guilty 
of lying or brutality, is a fool. Right must 
remain right, even if thereby all the countries 
in the world be brought to ruin. 

The supreme duty of every patriot is that 
he should keep his own courage high and as- 
sist in the triumph of truth and right. Truly 
it were a bad physician who, in the middle of 
an operation, should allow himself to be over- 
mastered by physical nausea, and a cowardly 
141 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

/ patriot who should try to drown his fear of 
/ disagreeable revelations with loud yells of 
/ "Hurrah!" The desire of the true German 
I patriot is for a noble and free and peaceful 
Fatherland. For him, Truth is no subject of 
the King of Prussia, nor is Right the dictate 
of Prussian State officials. He does not garb 
himself as a harlequin in order to curry fa- 
vour with the great. He loves and defends his 
country, yet he does not drag other countries 
through the mire. He does not renounce his 
critical faculty, but he demands that his coun- 
try should live in harmony with the laws of 
I civilisation, humanity, and justice; for only 
Xjthen can he truly love her. 

Therefore the true patriot will read the 
book *'J'Accuse" to the end, just like any 
other book. The reading will possibly cause 
him pain, in so far as it will reveal to him 
matters of which he was ignorant. But he will 
overcome this pain. He will examine dispas- 
sionately the accusations and the evidence 
which it brings forward, and he will try to 
142 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

refute them. And if it should result that, 
despite every official assurance to the con- 
trary, despite every infamy on the part of 
others, and despite this or that extenuating 
circumstance, the thesis of the book proves 
ultimately to be incapable of refutation, then 
he will, with a heavy heart, but he will, draw 
the necessary conclusion, and recognise in the 
author of ''J'Accuse" that patriot who has 
rendered the most precious service to our 
Fatherland that could be rendered. He has 
proclaimed the truth. 

To the discussion of this question of re- 
sponsibility we ask the German to bring to 
bear his most distinguished qualities, his logic 
and his objectivity. Whoever should prevent 
us, as free citizens of a modern State, from 
seeking after the truth in the way that our 
great thinkers have taught us ; whoever, as a 
German, conceives that, in this most impor- 
tant of all European questions of the present 
day, we should be influenced by any consider- 
ations of respect or deference, whether to- 
143 



IS 

irj 
IS I 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

wards dynasties, diplomats, or other human 
powers; whoever dares only to discuss the 
responsibility for the World- War according 
to the prescription and by the permission of 
the German Government, that man turns his 
Germanism into idiotism, for which the hon- 
est patriot can feel only contempt. 
j^ For mark well ! there is only one Truth, and 
/ it is capable of demonstration, provided, of 
course, that this demonstration is sought, not 
in Berlin, or Paris, or London, or Petrograd, 
but solely and exclusively in the name of 
Europe and in the prevailing sense of right of 
fhe modern world. 

VI. — ^For the discussion of the questions 
brought forward by '' J'Accuse" we must re- 
ject the standpoint of mediaeval or dynastic 
theories of right, just as we reject the pathetic 
folly of patriotic surliness and indignation. I 
have already pointed out that, in the modern 
world, there can only be one morality for 
State and citizen, and that, for example, the 
theory of a *' preventive" war is nothing else 
144 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

than a servile modernisation of the mediaeval 
hon plaisir of the despot. The trial must 
therefore be conducted by duly authorised 
judges, and in accordance with the methods 
and the assessments proper to criminal cases ; 
it must be conducted in the name of Europe 
and in the interests of the general welfare 
of Europe. Not the welfare of this or that 
dynasty, party, caste, religion, or world-con- 
ception may be allowed to serve as a criterion 
of right in this trial, but only the general wel- 
fare of the European nations. 

A hundred years ago Napoleon, the Super- 
man of War, was exiled to St. Helena because 
he had steeped Europe for twenty years in a 
welter of blood and horror. But Napoleon 
was unfortunately tried and sentenced, not by 
the nations of Europe, but by her princes. 
The judicial proceedings of the ''Holy Alli- 
ance ' ' were conducted, not in the name of the 
general welfare of Europe, but in the name 
and for the benefit of dynasties who were con- 
cerned for their own privileges. And since 
145 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

dynasties never execute the will of the people, 
but only the will of Providence, which enjoins 
upon them that they should stifle the pre- 
sumptuous hankerings of their countries for 
free self-government, they organised a Eu- 
rope after their own taste. They exiled a 
great man. Napoleon, in order to make room 
for a dozen little men. They organised peace, 
not as a lawful condition, but as a donation 
from God and His earthly representatives. 
War remained suspended over Europe, and 
its horrors were unchained as often and as 
long as these earthly despots gave the sign. 
Europe was a chess-board for royal players. 
But only in one case did a game end as a game 
of chess ought to end — with a checkmate ; in 
the case of the others it was always a remis; 
the men were set up again, and another new 
game commenced, until finally, at the present 
day, this criminal passion for the game of 
war has caught in its toils the whole of Eu- 
rope and has engendered the same condition, 
the same universal longing for deliverance 
146 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

from war, as prevailed at the time when Na- 
poleon had driven all Europe to despair. 
I But this time we shall take care that it is 
I no longer kings who sit in judgment over 
} kings, that it is no longer merely a case of 
I the expulsion of a rival by dynasties fright- 
j ened for their own privileges. This time it 
I will be the nations themselves who will de- 
I cide concerning their future. If, in this, they 
exhibit no more intelligence than those indi- 
viduals who represented their sovereigns in 
the year 1815, if they cannot bring into being 
a reasonable Europe, at any rate they will 
not have cause to cast reproaches on their 
I sovereigns later. 

In any case, in the course of this trial, an 
entirely new language will be employed, a 
language hitherto unknown to the dynasties 
and their servants. For instance, our neutral 
Swiss, who in the sentence quoted above re- 
ferred to the '^feeling" of William II. as a 
criterion for the policy to be adopted, would 
meet with a sharp rebuff if he used the word 
147 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

in this sense. In the Middle Ages, when, as 
we have said, there were neither conscript sol- 
diers nor jeopardised fatherlands, the ''feel- 
ing" of an individual absolute ruler may have 
sufficed for bringing about a war. But, at the 
present day, when the weal or woe of millions 
and the civilisation of Europe are at stake, 
the "feeling" of an individual must no longer 
decide, but must surrender to the feeling and 
the will of the people at large. Should such 
a ruler, in virtue of an alleged divine right, 
still endeavour to enforce his will, then he 
must be prepared to be called to account be- 
fore the coming international tribunal. 

A yet more typical example of the mode of 
discussion which must not be employed in this 
inquiry is furnished by the Norddeutsche All- 
gemeine Zeitung of March 26th, 1915. To the 
English accusation (that Germany had made 
the War unavoidable by declining Grey's pro- 
posal for a conference of the four Powers) the 
following answer is made: ''Germany de- 
clined the proposal for a conference because 
148 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

the affair in dispute concerned two Powers 
only, and because it would be incompatible 
with the dignity of her Austrian ally to regu- 
late the measures which she might find it nec- 
essary to adopt as a defence against the 
criminal intermeddlings of a small neighbour- 
ing State, in accordance with the pleasure of 
other Great Powers not concerned in the 
quarrel." ^^ 

The ''dignity" of Germany's Austro-Hun- 
garian ally is a notion capable of such in- 
finitely wide interpretation that it could never 
be admitted as a legal justification. If it is 
compatible with the "dignity" of Austria to 
employ diplomats who have been proved 
guilty of gross forgeries {vide the Friedjung 
trial and the Prochaska case),^^ then this 

"This article practically amounts to a paraphrasing of 
the reason already given in the German White Book (No. 
12) for the refusal of Grey's proposal for a conference. 
" It is impossible for us to drag our ally before a European 
tribunal for the settlement of her dispute with Serbia. ' ' 

" The Friedjung case offers a parallel to the Parnell in- 
vestigation in England. The Ban of Croatia, Baron Ranch, 
had instituted a charge of high treason against a number of 

149 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

''dignity" is certainly not incompatible with 
an arbitration by the European Great Pow- 
ers. What is ''dignity'"? Examination re- 
veals that there are as many conceptions of 
"honour" and "dignity" as there are classes 
and private interests. When at the end of 
the fifteenth century a general peace was 
proclaimed, the robber-barons declared that it 

Croato-Serbian politicians. It was discovered that the accu- 
sation was based on forged documents, and the accused were 
acquitted. Undeterred by this, the eminent historian, Dr. 
Friedjung, repeated the charges in the Neue Freie Presse, 
pledging his word as an historian and expert in documents 
that he could produce written evidence of his accusations. 
A libel action ensued (December, 1909), when it was found 
that he, too, was relying on forged papers supplied by one 
Vasitch. (See "The Hapsburg Monarchy," by Mr. H. 
Wiekham Steed.) Herr Prochaska was Austrian Consul at 
Prisrend on the outbreak of the First Balkan War. Eeports 
of his violent ill-treatment by the Serbians on their entering 
that town were circulated by the Press Bureau of the Aus- 
trian Foreign Office, apparently with the object of creating 
a casus ielli against Serbia. These reports were afterwards 
officially admitted to be wholly without foundation, a fact 
known to the Foreign Office at the time when they were cir- 
culated. The Arbeiter Zeitung wrote: "Who can believe 
that this unexampled scandal will fail to affect our inter- 
national position? . . . The Prochaska case and its issue are 
equivalent to a lost battle for the Austrian State." See 
The Times, December 18th, 1912.— Ed. 

150 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

was incompatible with their dignity to aban- 
don their arms and their feuds and to accept 
the judgments of ordinary civil law. They 
shouted and stormed that their good sword 
was their highest privilege received by them 
direct from God. To no purpose. They were 
finally compelled to realise that the safety of 
travelling merchants and the public peace of 
the country were more important than the 
dignity of aristocratic brawlers. They were 
obliged to submit. At the present day it would 
no longer occur to any noble to refuse the 
jurisdiction of a civil court on the plea of his 
peculiar aristocratic dignity. 

In international life there will be, there 
must be, effected a corresponding revaluation 
of all such traditional conceptions. The ' * dig- 
nity" of Austria, the '* prestige" of Germany, 
the ''honour" of France, the "world-power" 
of England, and other such costly and quite 
vague and intangible notions, may be worth a 
great deal, a very great deal ; but they are not 
worth the peace and tranquillity of Europe. 
151 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

Wlien it is a question of millions of human 
lives and of thousands of millions of cultural 
values, it may be demanded in the name of 
humanity that such political imponderabili- 
ties should for a moment retire modestly into 
the background. 

Truly the world-conception of the diplo- 
mats is strange and in the highest degree dan- 
gerous; they refuse to accept an arbitration 
because the ''dignity" of this or that State 
might suffer thereby. What would they say 
if a footpad were to declare proudly that his 
''dignity*' forbade him to accept the decision 
of the court, and that he could not make his 
fate dependent upon the pleasure of other 
outside persons? 

The editor of the NorddeutscJie AUgemeine 
Zeitung would doubtless burst into loud 
laughter at such a childish answer. I do not 
say that his answer to the English accusation 
is childish, but I venture to maintain that, if 
anyone, in the morning light of the twentieth 
century, refuses a conference which might 
152 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

safeguard the peace of the world, merely be- 
cause the *' dignity'* of a country or of a 
dynasty is in danger, his conduct is criminal. 
When the whole of Europe is filled with trem- 
bling suspense, Austria must submit her dis- 
pute to the decision of the Powers who are 
not concerned in it, just as any private indi- 
vidual does when he submits a dispute with 
his neighbour to the decision of a court of 
justice. If the Government of a State con- 
ceives itself as too exalted to accept the im- 
partial jurisdiction of Europe; if it is less 
concerned for the weal or woe of millions of 
civilised human beings than for the heedless 
pursuit of its own selfish interests ; if, like the 
robber-barons of the Middle Ages, it claims 
a divine and irresponsible right to indulge in 
brawlings and feuds, then, in the name of the 
public peace and security of Europe, that 
Government must be brought to justice. For 
is it not true, dear reader, that, in our cen- 
tury, the dignity and welfare of Europe and 
her civilisation stand high above any diplo- 
153 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

matic notion of the dignity of one of her 

States? 

j To repeat once again: The whole ideology 

I and phraseology of incontestable "dignity," 

/ ' ' honour, " " special privileges, " ' ' divine mis- 

I sions," &c., have no application to the mod- 

j ern world. We should be forced to despair of 

\ humanity if it were incapable of getting rid 

I once and for all of these dangerous tinsel-and- 

I trumpery notions inherited from mediaeval 

despots and diplomats. 

We sincerely hope that the Norddeutsche 
Allgemeine Zeitung may be able in the forth- 
coming inquiry to bring forward other rea- 
sons for the rejection of Grey's proposal. On 
the other hand, we confidently look forward 
to a time when German intellectuals shall 
cease to interpret the world solely by refer- 
ence to dynastic dictionaries. After this War 
only the language of international law and of 
national welfare based upon free self-govern- 
ment ought to be employed. 



154 



V. 

To sum Tip. The book **J'Accuse," no 
matter how we may criticise its thesis, has 
opened the debate on the question of the re- 
sponsibility for the War. Since the writer 
accuses the Government of our country, and 
since this accusation has awakened echoes all 
over the world, it is absolutely necessary that 
we Germans should answer it with that thor- 
oughness and downright honesty which have 
from all time been the pre-eminent virtues of 
our race. If, however (as has unfortunately 
been the case till now), we try to hush up the 
book or else to smother it with abuse, this 
proceeding may be taken to imply an admis- 
sion of guilt. 

If, on the one hand, it is urgently necessary 
that, on the part of Germany, the thesis of 
the book should be dispassionately and judi- 
155 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

cially refuted, on the other hand its signifi- 
cance would not end there. Rather, every 
loyal friend of peace must, as a matter of 
principle, participate in the bringing to trial 
of the instigator of the War. For the debate 
on the question of guilt demanded by '' J'Ac- 
cuse" is the most momentous undertaking 
that Europe has to accomplish if she means to 
rid herself of war. It is therefore urgently 
necessary that all Europe should realise the 
importance of such a trial, and not be misled 
by those numerous individuals who, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, obscure the ques- 
tion of guilt by all kinds of learned theories. 

For these reasons, and because it is only by 
the conduct of this trial in accordance with 
international law that Europe can be safe- 
guarded from fresh catastrophes, it is essen- 
tial that it should be carried out in accord- 
ance with certain modern principles, namely : 

(1) War is in the modem world a crime, 
and its instigators are criminals in the legal 
sense of the word. 

156 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

(2) The crime under discussion was com- 
mitted during the period between July 23rd, 
1914, and August 1st, 1914; histories of the 
events prior to this period afford, therefore, 
at the most no more than extenuating circum- 
stances. 

(3) The fact that an Imperialistic war of 
conquest, as the present world-catastrophe is 
declared to be by *'J'Accuse," constitutes in 
modern Europe the most gigantic crime that 
human fancy could conceive, needs no further 
demonstration so far as we pacifists and dem- 
ocrats are concerned. 

But also the mere notion of an objectively 
necessary or subjectively conceived, that is to 
say, an alleged ''preventive," war deserves to 
meet with the most summary rejection and 
denunciation as a theory fit only for criminals 
and would-be criminals. 

(4) Emphasis of the fact that wars are 
never engendered by an immaculate concep- 
tion, but by the will to power of individuals. 

(5) The putting on one side of all patriotic 

157 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

prepossessions and conventional sentiments. 
Investigation in the name of Europe and of 
the universal moral sense of the nations. 

(6) The welfare of the nations as the sole 
admissible basis of discussion and the su- 
preme goal. 

Only after the resolute prosecution of this 
trial shall we have a Europe capable of or- 
ganising such a condition of public peace as 
accords with human reason. Anyone who 
strives to establish such a condition without 
having first demanded the punishment of the 
criminal, anyone who is capable of appealing 
for assistance in the reorganisation of Europe 
to those who have hitherto declined to share 
the responsibility for war with their people, 
is setting a wolf to mind the sheep and con- 
stituting himself the protector of the war- 
fury. 

In the name of the millions who have al- 
ready fallen in this gigantic War, in the name 
of the millions perchance yet to fall, in the 
name of the public peace and security of Eu- 
158 



BECAUSE I AM A GERMAN 

rope, in the name of the culture and civilisa- 
tion of our earth, in the name of the invio- 
lable, unwritten, and eternal right of the na- 
tions, I demand this trial and this punish- 
ment, and I demand them 

Just because I am a German. 



159 



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